Where do you see Linux in 10 years? Will it be a completely ubiquitious OS, used on every computer? Will it just dominate one market? Will it fade away? Or will it be outlawed? There are people who will have you believe any one of these scenarios; which do you think is most likely, and why?
It's been ages since I last compiled a kernel (2.4.18 when it was 'hot off the press'), and I don't remember all the steps. (I always manage to get them in the wrong order.) Furthermore, the compiling instructions are apparently different for 2.6?
Searching on Google -- even with the "2.6" or "2.5" -- yields some instructions on 1.0 series kernels that trail on for pages and pages. Can someone post a verbose summary of how to build the kernel under 2.6? (I know the basics, of course. Just the make commands and such.) I doubt I'm the only one who would benefit.
When I got my license, I made a point of ensuring I was marked as an organ donor. I can understand that some people have religions preventing it, or otherwise oppose the idea for one reason or another, but...
If you're not against it for any reason, you really ought to check it off. If you're against it, that's fine. But I know a lot of people who don't have a reason for not doing it, it was just too much work to check the box off or something?
Pesonally, I'd rather know that when I die, I (indirectly) save someone else's life. (And as someone once joked: "Remember, they're not taking your organs. They're keeping them alive for you.") If you don't have a problem saving a life after you die through organ donation, please consider making sure you indicate such next time you renew your license.
I'm venturing off-topic a bit here, but...
Do they have legal grounds to charge me for transport in an ambulance? ie, if I'm not conscious and able to give consent, I know the law says they can assume I want treatment, but can they assume I agree to pay them $1K+?
I think it's sketchy legal ground. If I come and mow your lawn out of the blue, and then give you a bill for $5,000, you have no obligation at all to pay it. You never agreed to pay, even if your lawn needed to be cut badly.
Similarly, even if you need to get to a hospital urgently, can it be assumed that you agreed to pay? I'm not so sure.
(Heh, I know someone who's an EMT... He one time said that one local ambulance company used to literally have a credit card machine in the back, and they'd swipe your card and wait for it to clear before transporting you. Needless to say, that didn't go over so well and they eventually got rid of the machines...)
The scary thing is... People in my town actually raised hell when we tried to buy a new fire truck to replace the one that was about to break down. Thankfully, the town bought it anyway, but... people never cease to amaze me.
Well, I'm not sure this would work out so well. (And I'm skipping over the fact that this is more or less a Distributed Denial of Service attack...)
A lot of clueless companies only care about how many hits they get. They don't care (well, of course they do, but not entirely directly) whether or not you buy anything. They'll see that their newest spam company just got them 500% of the hits the last one did, and they'll pay the spammers extra, and tell all their 'friends' about how good the spammer is.
Eventually they'll realize that the percentage of orders-per-hits is going way down, but at least in the short term, they're going to be overjoyed at how many hits they're getting.
Affiliate "Networks" and "NBC," and read "Sensor" as "Censor," assuming that the government was trying to censor networks like NBC? (And was anyone else... not surprised?)
Just a quick rant: if we're discussing protocols, openness is key to good security. But if we're discussing things like specific hosts, I think obscurity is important. (For example, if I run ssh on a non-standard port, it doesn't technically boost my security. But when the next script kiddie port scans my box at random, he sees just ports 80 and 25 open, and moves onto the next box.) Obscurity should never be a key part of things, but it can be a nice little add-on to an already secure system.
But again, if we're talking protocols (which is what the article's about), you're right -- someone in the US is bound to figure out how to exploit it. But if it's open, people will figure out flaws in the beta form, and they'll be fixed before the thing goes live. (I'd expect the 'back end' would be closed, but hopefully have an army of good developers...)
Let's try again, but set it to "Plain Text" rather than HTML.:)
What do you recommend we use? If people are confused by tech terms, what units should we use? "This will hold up to 40,000 Word documents?" The number of MP3s? This might help some people, but frankly, it's about as accurate as measuring the area of a closet based on "Things it can hold" -- if you have Word documents of things like Shakespeare's complete works, you're going to fit way fewer Word documents on a computer than if you had 1-page letters to friends. Bytes make sense, and they're the true limit. There's no limit that you can fit, say, the 40,000 Word documents -- it's when you run out of bytes that you have a problem. I guess what I don't understand is what you'd have us use instead.
A lot of stores now have things that will say, for example, you can store up to 24 hours of video on hard drive X, or 30,000 MP3s. But throwing away the 'real' terms entirely will cause havoc, as people don't understand why they could only fit 5,000 MP3s, each an hour-long speech, onto their hard drive that was supposed to hold 30,000. We need to help them to understand -- not ramble about how a byte is 8 bits, but rather something more like "Well, the average MP3 is about 5 megabytes -- five million bytes. This hard drive will hold up to 80 gigabytes -- eighty billion bytes..." You give the example of the medical profession, and how few people actually understand many of the terms.
My doctor does what I recommend people do with computers -- he'll use a medical term, but then explain what it means. If he told me "You have a condition where you have to watch what you eat or you'll die," and then I tried to explain this to another doctor, he wouldn't really know what I was talking about. But if he told me (fortunately, this is just an example) "You have type 2 diabetes. This means..." and gave me a (concise and easy-to-understand) example, I'd know the term, _and_ understand what it meant. My doctor's always done this, and it gives me great confidence in his abilities, and is frankly kind of neat to learn about things, rather than having overly simplistic terms used.
The key isn't to stop using tech terms, the key is to explain them in a way that makes sense to ordinary people.
You know the NRA's "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns" saying? I'm finding that it applies to more and more things in modern times.
Crypto -- do you really think if the US bans crypto, al Queda terrorists are going to stop using it?
This -- if he could find this information, don't you think organized terrorists could, too? If not more information?
I can understand the concern, but frankly, censoring the information will probably have no effect on keeping terrorists from it. (And do you really think Osama's going to be running around New York clipping fiber lines with a pair of scissors to slow down some random company's Internet connection?)
What do you recommend we use? If people are confused by tech terms, what units should we use? "This will hold up to 40,000 Word documents?" The number of MP3s? This might help some people, but frankly, it's about as accurate as measuring the area of a closet based on "Things it can hold" -- if you have Word documents of things like Shakespeare's complete works, you're going to fit way fewer Word documents on a computer than if you had 1-page letters to friends.
Bytes make sense, and they're the true limit. There's no limit that you can fit, say, the 40,000 Word documents -- it's when you run out of bytes that you have a problem.
I guess what I don't understand is what you'd have us use instead. A lot of stores now have things that will say, for example, you can store up to 24 hours of video on hard drive X, or 30,000 MP3s. But throwing away the 'real' terms entirely will cause havoc, as people don't understand why they could only fit 5,000 MP3s, each an hour-long speech, onto their hard drive that was supposed to hold 30,000.
We need to help them to understand -- not ramble about how a byte is 8 bits, but rather something more like "Well, the average MP3 is about 5 megabytes -- five million bytes. This hard drive will hold up to 80 gigabytes -- eighty billion bytes..."
You give the example of the medical profession, and how few people actually understand many of the terms. My doctor does what I recommend people do with computers -- he'll use a medical term, but then explain what it means.
If he told me "You have a condition where you have to watch what you eat or you'll die," and then I tried to explain this to another doctor, he wouldn't really know what I was talking about. But if he told me (fortunately, this is just an example) "You have type 2 diabetes. This means..." and gave me a (concise and easy-to-understand) example, I'd know the term, _and_ understand what it meant. My doctor's always done this, and it gives me great confidence in his abilities, and is frankly kind of neat to learn about things, rather than having overly simplistic terms used.
The key isn't to stop using tech terms, the key is to explain them in a way that makes sense to ordinary people.
Am I the only one that steps on these, and then turns around about halfway there, and tries walking the other way, walking in place for several minutes?
Imagine the entire country walking in place on these things... This isn't going to work out well at all.
HBO: 7 PM: "Gorilla Warfare"Starring Billy Gates and Jeff Bezos. Two 900 pound gorillas duke it out over their massive collections of copyrights and trademarks. Watch as Bezos invokes the DMCA after Gates attacks him with a chair! Rated "R" for extreme violence.
Really, though... Am I the only one who just read the story on Slashdot and cracked up laughing? It's just too funny for words.
I think it was Sony that started bragging about all the cool ways they could cripple technology through DRM. Now eBay goes and starts spouting off about how it is eager and willing to divulge personal information to anyone pretending to be a police officer.
Do they simply not grasp what it is that consumers want? Like being able to listen to their CDs, and having their private information kept private?
Appologies if I sound like a troll, but this is just absurd. I had intended to sign up for an eBay account and sell off a bunch of old junk this summer, but I'm now terrified to give them my information. Not that I have anything to hide, but I do rather enjoy my personal information being kept private.
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Where do you see Linux in 10 years? Will it be a completely ubiquitious OS, used on every computer? Will it just dominate one market? Will it fade away? Or will it be outlawed? There are people who will have you believe any one of these scenarios; which do you think is most likely, and why?
Thanks a bunch. Can't wait to get started.
It's been ages since I last compiled a kernel (2.4.18 when it was 'hot off the press'), and I don't remember all the steps. (I always manage to get them in the wrong order.) Furthermore, the compiling instructions are apparently different for 2.6?
Searching on Google -- even with the "2.6" or "2.5" -- yields some instructions on 1.0 series kernels that trail on for pages and pages. Can someone post a verbose summary of how to build the kernel under 2.6? (I know the basics, of course. Just the make commands and such.) I doubt I'm the only one who would benefit.
2.6 supposedly has way better file handling and overall handling under high loads. Maybe he's actually testing to see if this is true. ;)
Anyone else packing up their things and moving to Germany? ;)
When I got my license, I made a point of ensuring I was marked as an organ donor. I can understand that some people have religions preventing it, or otherwise oppose the idea for one reason or another, but...
If you're not against it for any reason, you really ought to check it off. If you're against it, that's fine. But I know a lot of people who don't have a reason for not doing it, it was just too much work to check the box off or something?
Pesonally, I'd rather know that when I die, I (indirectly) save someone else's life. (And as someone once joked: "Remember, they're not taking your organs. They're keeping them alive for you.") If you don't have a problem saving a life after you die through organ donation, please consider making sure you indicate such next time you renew your license.
Include a card the size of a license that says so, as well as a contact number to confirm.
So they can call you when you die to confirm that you wanted to donate your organs?
I'm venturing off-topic a bit here, but... Do they have legal grounds to charge me for transport in an ambulance? ie, if I'm not conscious and able to give consent, I know the law says they can assume I want treatment, but can they assume I agree to pay them $1K+? I think it's sketchy legal ground. If I come and mow your lawn out of the blue, and then give you a bill for $5,000, you have no obligation at all to pay it. You never agreed to pay, even if your lawn needed to be cut badly. Similarly, even if you need to get to a hospital urgently, can it be assumed that you agreed to pay? I'm not so sure. (Heh, I know someone who's an EMT... He one time said that one local ambulance company used to literally have a credit card machine in the back, and they'd swipe your card and wait for it to clear before transporting you. Needless to say, that didn't go over so well and they eventually got rid of the machines...)
The scary thing is... People in my town actually raised hell when we tried to buy a new fire truck to replace the one that was about to break down. Thankfully, the town bought it anyway, but... people never cease to amaze me.
But I thought Al Gore invented the Internet. You'd think with all those m4d sk1llz, he could at least have rigged things in his favor.
The next day, he "discovers" that Russia's buying some nukes from Niger... :)
Well, I'm not sure this would work out so well. (And I'm skipping over the fact that this is more or less a Distributed Denial of Service attack...) A lot of clueless companies only care about how many hits they get. They don't care (well, of course they do, but not entirely directly) whether or not you buy anything. They'll see that their newest spam company just got them 500% of the hits the last one did, and they'll pay the spammers extra, and tell all their 'friends' about how good the spammer is. Eventually they'll realize that the percentage of orders-per-hits is going way down, but at least in the short term, they're going to be overjoyed at how many hits they're getting.
Affiliate "Networks" and "NBC," and read "Sensor" as "Censor," assuming that the government was trying to censor networks like NBC? (And was anyone else... not surprised?)
This is a trivial question, but it's bugging me: Why is the limit 12 Mbps? Why not 10? Or 15? 12 Mbps seems like an entirely random number to me.
Is 12 some sort of magical number, or is it as arbitrary as I'm convinced?
Just a quick rant: if we're discussing protocols, openness is key to good security. But if we're discussing things like specific hosts, I think obscurity is important. (For example, if I run ssh on a non-standard port, it doesn't technically boost my security. But when the next script kiddie port scans my box at random, he sees just ports 80 and 25 open, and moves onto the next box.) Obscurity should never be a key part of things, but it can be a nice little add-on to an already secure system. But again, if we're talking protocols (which is what the article's about), you're right -- someone in the US is bound to figure out how to exploit it. But if it's open, people will figure out flaws in the beta form, and they'll be fixed before the thing goes live. (I'd expect the 'back end' would be closed, but hopefully have an army of good developers...)
Let's try again, but set it to "Plain Text" rather than HTML. :)
What do you recommend we use? If people are confused by tech terms, what units should we use? "This will hold up to 40,000 Word documents?" The number of MP3s? This might help some people, but frankly, it's about as accurate as measuring the area of a closet based on "Things it can hold" -- if you have Word documents of things like Shakespeare's complete works, you're going to fit way fewer Word documents on a computer than if you had 1-page letters to friends. Bytes make sense, and they're the true limit. There's no limit that you can fit, say, the 40,000 Word documents -- it's when you run out of bytes that you have a problem. I guess what I don't understand is what you'd have us use instead.
A lot of stores now have things that will say, for example, you can store up to 24 hours of video on hard drive X, or 30,000 MP3s. But throwing away the 'real' terms entirely will cause havoc, as people don't understand why they could only fit 5,000 MP3s, each an hour-long speech, onto their hard drive that was supposed to hold 30,000. We need to help them to understand -- not ramble about how a byte is 8 bits, but rather something more like "Well, the average MP3 is about 5 megabytes -- five million bytes. This hard drive will hold up to 80 gigabytes -- eighty billion bytes..." You give the example of the medical profession, and how few people actually understand many of the terms.
My doctor does what I recommend people do with computers -- he'll use a medical term, but then explain what it means. If he told me "You have a condition where you have to watch what you eat or you'll die," and then I tried to explain this to another doctor, he wouldn't really know what I was talking about. But if he told me (fortunately, this is just an example) "You have type 2 diabetes. This means..." and gave me a (concise and easy-to-understand) example, I'd know the term, _and_ understand what it meant. My doctor's always done this, and it gives me great confidence in his abilities, and is frankly kind of neat to learn about things, rather than having overly simplistic terms used.
The key isn't to stop using tech terms, the key is to explain them in a way that makes sense to ordinary people.
Yeah... I forgot to check "HTML Formatted" :(
You know the NRA's "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns" saying? I'm finding that it applies to more and more things in modern times. Crypto -- do you really think if the US bans crypto, al Queda terrorists are going to stop using it? This -- if he could find this information, don't you think organized terrorists could, too? If not more information? I can understand the concern, but frankly, censoring the information will probably have no effect on keeping terrorists from it. (And do you really think Osama's going to be running around New York clipping fiber lines with a pair of scissors to slow down some random company's Internet connection?)
What do you recommend we use? If people are confused by tech terms, what units should we use? "This will hold up to 40,000 Word documents?" The number of MP3s? This might help some people, but frankly, it's about as accurate as measuring the area of a closet based on "Things it can hold" -- if you have Word documents of things like Shakespeare's complete works, you're going to fit way fewer Word documents on a computer than if you had 1-page letters to friends. Bytes make sense, and they're the true limit. There's no limit that you can fit, say, the 40,000 Word documents -- it's when you run out of bytes that you have a problem. I guess what I don't understand is what you'd have us use instead. A lot of stores now have things that will say, for example, you can store up to 24 hours of video on hard drive X, or 30,000 MP3s. But throwing away the 'real' terms entirely will cause havoc, as people don't understand why they could only fit 5,000 MP3s, each an hour-long speech, onto their hard drive that was supposed to hold 30,000. We need to help them to understand -- not ramble about how a byte is 8 bits, but rather something more like "Well, the average MP3 is about 5 megabytes -- five million bytes. This hard drive will hold up to 80 gigabytes -- eighty billion bytes..." You give the example of the medical profession, and how few people actually understand many of the terms. My doctor does what I recommend people do with computers -- he'll use a medical term, but then explain what it means. If he told me "You have a condition where you have to watch what you eat or you'll die," and then I tried to explain this to another doctor, he wouldn't really know what I was talking about. But if he told me (fortunately, this is just an example) "You have type 2 diabetes. This means..." and gave me a (concise and easy-to-understand) example, I'd know the term, _and_ understand what it meant. My doctor's always done this, and it gives me great confidence in his abilities, and is frankly kind of neat to learn about things, rather than having overly simplistic terms used. The key isn't to stop using tech terms, the key is to explain them in a way that makes sense to ordinary people.
And the duplicate stories make it doubly intense!
Am I the only one that steps on these, and then turns around about halfway there, and tries walking the other way, walking in place for several minutes? Imagine the entire country walking in place on these things... This isn't going to work out well at all.
Mmmmm. Nothing like a good bottle of gasoline. ;)
What just happened to the sidebar? (Look to your left)
HBO: 7 PM: "Gorilla Warfare" Starring Billy Gates and Jeff Bezos. Two 900 pound gorillas duke it out over their massive collections of copyrights and trademarks. Watch as Bezos invokes the DMCA after Gates attacks him with a chair! Rated "R" for extreme violence.
Really, though... Am I the only one who just read the story on Slashdot and cracked up laughing? It's just too funny for words.
I think it was Sony that started bragging about all the cool ways they could cripple technology through DRM. Now eBay goes and starts spouting off about how it is eager and willing to divulge personal information to anyone pretending to be a police officer. Do they simply not grasp what it is that consumers want? Like being able to listen to their CDs, and having their private information kept private? Appologies if I sound like a troll, but this is just absurd. I had intended to sign up for an eBay account and sell off a bunch of old junk this summer, but I'm now terrified to give them my information. Not that I have anything to hide, but I do rather enjoy my personal information being kept private.