If the arguments against it are geting harder to find, it is getting easier to sell.:-)
If you're conviced that something can be done cheaper and better using open source software, go to the management and ask for permission to set up a pilot for just a single mission critical application. If the pilot is succesful, you have proven your point and the trend can gradually be reversed. Rather than automatically buying more closed software, the management is more likely to consider an open source solution as a viable alternative.
The existing software base is certainly a big problem in many organizations, and yet more and more are managing to make the move towards open source software.
At least once a quarter, somebody in our organization asks why we're not using Apache yet, and with the IIS security problems that crop up all the time, it's getting harder to answer that question.
Well, my post was intended to be vaguely humorous, a fact which none of the moderators appeared to notice. I totally agree with you that responsibility should rest with those who do the deed.
However, I ask you, why do you have the kind of crime rates in USA that you do?
I live in a small country with a population of about 5 million people. There are 2 million registered guns here. Yes, that's four guns for every ten people. Yet, death by shooting is extremely rare.
Why? Because the "right to bear arms" is different from the "right to own guns". In my country it is illegal to carry a weapon in public. Use of weapons is srictly restricted to hunting and sports.
Sure, the bad guys will get hold of guns anyway. However, the nutcakes, the weirdos, chicks with PMS, and the gray haired grannies on a REALLY BAD DAY will not. A fist in the face is unlikely to kill. A gun drawn out in anger, on the other hand, is often fatal.
The point here is that, if guns are readily available and carried for the express purpose of using them on other people (i.e. self-defence), there is a good probability that someone will do so. If you carry a gun for self-defence it means that you have already mentally prepared yourself to use it on a human being.
One concern though would be that perhaps we should consider Martian environmental concerns as well before launching a mission and/or a colony there. I would hate to see the natural beauty of Mars (which exists in my opinion) destroyed by mindless exploration.
I can already hear what the oil and forestry companies are going to say about colonizing Mars: "Let's put all the Greenpeace people into a bloody big spacecraft and ship them all to Mars!";-)
If I shoot a person and she dies. Should people sue God because of his buggy code?
No, but the people might sue the gun manufacturer and demand tighter gun control laws.
In fact, if computers were declared weapons, a bunch of trigger happy Americans would probably rise to the barricades, Microsoft executives in the lead, and vehemently defedt their God given constitutional right to bear computers.
Good point. What I meant to say is, I've been wondering why somebody hasn't been caught using it yet.;-) Who knows how many sleepers are embedded in the installed Windows base, silently waiting for the attack command, or crunching away at somebody's password every night.
It's called the normal distribution. The worst programmers can't write networking code at all. Normal programmers write crappy code and the best coders get all frothy about all the crappy code out there.
Sad but true. Quality takes time, money, and good people. All scarce resources.
On angle he neglects to mention is that the worm could only be the first wave of attack. The machines rapidly infected by a flash virus could easily be transformed into a massively parallel computing platform, into which a seconday attack program could be distributed in a matter of seconds. Such programs could then be used, for instance, to crack entry into strategically important machines that do not exhibit vulnerabilities directly exploitable by the first stage virus.
Scary. I've been wondering why someone hasn't done it yet.
Whether you choose to apply [copy]right to copying or distribution, in the end it does not matter. It is a question of having a control point. Which simply does not exist. Either you try to stop copying in the devices that can make digital copies (any gadget with a CPU or a DSP on it) or you try to find a point in the distribution chain where you can stop the distribution (such as a directory maintained by companies like Napster or AudioGalaxy).
The problem in either case is that the potential control points are beyond reach of national legislation. Sure, you can impose restrictions on digital devices and try to prevent imports of devices that break those restrictions. However, this is not enforcible internationally. All it takes is a single digital copy that finds its way into the Internet. Once the first copy has been made, it can be distributed en masse.
Then it becomes a question trying to find the control point for preventing its distribution. This is even more hopeless. Sure, you can go after the Napsters of this world but that won't stop the distribution. People will just find other ways to share and you can't go after every citizen who does so. It would simply be infeasible.
So, let the legislators have their little dreams. They are fighting against wind mills.
The movie industry will be the next one to feel the cold winds. Pretty soon full movies will be as convenient to swap as mp3's are today. While people will still go to theaters to see the movies on wide screen, VHS and DVD rentals and sales will suffer. Sill, record breaking mega budget movies may soon be a thing of the past, too.
In the end, I think, the non-copyable and non-distributable commodity is the artist itself. No-one can duplicate the creativity of a person. Hopefully this will eventually lead to the artists having more control over their works. The business model certainly could be envisioned and it would be more artist-to-consumer without unnecessary middle men.
Imagine if we had cars that could pass through each other and through people without any resistance. I would be the end of traffic jams!
It's not off-topic you moron, it's an analogy.
Spread spectrum modulation technologies are interference limited. The more power is pumped into the spectrum, the harder it is for a receiver to pick a signal out of the noise. If the signal is too weak compared to the noise, you're out of luck.
So, while radio waves pass through each other without doing any harm, it's no good to anyone if you can't pick up a signal. Granted, anyone can transmit as much as they like.
MS et al actually gain from someone pirating their software rather than using OSS. Many people I know of priated MS Word, and if they didn't learn it this way and get used to it this way, they'd probably be using OpenOffice or whatever was cheapest for the jobs.
Funny thing is, OSS most probably reduces piracy in a major way, for the same reason it is eating into Microsoft's market share. Every great OSS application you go and download decreases your inclination go pirate some disgusting piece of bloatware for an OS you don't much care for anyway.
the article was posted at 23.59GMT, thus making it LOOK legit
Could someone please enforce a rule that all April fool jokes must be posted when it's April 1st in every part of the world? It's just impossible to enjoy these things if they arrive on the wrong day!
That is just ludicrous. A model is by definition a simplification, a scaled down version of the real thing. A very good model can get it right nine times out of ten but there is no such thing as a perfect model. The fact that even the best models are fallible does not make them worthless. The observation that a model is reasonably accurate in a certain type of scenario already tells us that the principles behind the model are sound, even if we're missing some factors.
Now, I'm no weatherman but climatological modeling cannot be that different from modeling in other areas.
The question is whether that model worked for climate change before and after that 2-year period that it supposedly got it right.
The key is to understand the limitations of a model in order not to misapply it.
I suppose you're arguing that a model that can predict a 2-year period does not yet tell us anything about climatological change because of the time scales involved. That doesn't make the model or the principles behind it invalid, it just makes the model limited.
If a number of such limited models pointed towards accelerated global warming caused by human civilization, I at least would be inclined to take it seriously.
Slashdot Mirror
it's a hard sell
:-)
If the arguments against it are geting harder to find, it is getting easier to sell.
If you're conviced that something can be done cheaper and better using open source software, go to the management and ask for permission to set up a pilot for just a single mission critical application. If the pilot is succesful, you have proven your point and the trend can gradually be reversed. Rather than automatically buying more closed software, the management is more likely to consider an open source solution as a viable alternative.
The existing software base is certainly a big problem in many organizations, and yet more and more are managing to make the move towards open source software.
At least once a quarter, somebody in our organization asks why we're not using Apache yet, and with the IIS security problems that crop up all the time, it's getting harder to answer that question.
Wouldn't it be easier to just start using Apache?
MAME on cell phones would be nice
Here it is:
http://koti.mbnet.fi/~haviital/
Probably won't be long before it's available for other Symbian phones as well, like the Nokia 7650 or Ericssony P800.
Just install the NFS server on it and mount the Communicator on your Linux machine:
NFS server for Nokia 9210/9290
Here's a great site for finding software for your 9210 or 9290:
http://www.my-communicator.com/
Try playing DOOM or boot Linux/Elks on the IBM XT emulator. Cool stuff!
Well, my post was intended to be vaguely humorous, a fact which none of the moderators appeared to notice. I totally agree with you that responsibility should rest with those who do the deed.
However, I ask you, why do you have the kind of crime rates in USA that you do?
I live in a small country with a population of about 5 million people. There are 2 million registered guns here. Yes, that's four guns for every ten people. Yet, death by shooting is extremely rare.
Why? Because the "right to bear arms" is different from the "right to own guns". In my country it is illegal to carry a weapon in public. Use of weapons is srictly restricted to hunting and sports.
Sure, the bad guys will get hold of guns anyway. However, the nutcakes, the weirdos, chicks with PMS, and the gray haired grannies on a REALLY BAD DAY will not. A fist in the face is unlikely to kill. A gun drawn out in anger, on the other hand, is often fatal.
The point here is that, if guns are readily available and carried for the express purpose of using them on other people (i.e. self-defence), there is a good probability that someone will do so. If you carry a gun for self-defence it means that you have already mentally prepared yourself to use it on a human being.
Just something to think about.
One concern though would be that perhaps we should consider Martian environmental concerns as well before launching a mission and/or a colony there. I would hate to see the natural beauty of Mars (which exists in my opinion) destroyed by mindless exploration.
;-)
I can already hear what the oil and forestry companies are going to say about colonizing Mars: "Let's put all the Greenpeace people into a bloody big spacecraft and ship them all to Mars!"
If I shoot a person and she dies. Should people sue God because of his buggy code?
No, but the people might sue the gun manufacturer and demand tighter gun control laws.
In fact, if computers were declared weapons, a bunch of trigger happy Americans would probably rise to the barricades, Microsoft executives in the lead, and vehemently defedt their God given constitutional right to bear computers.
Good point. What I meant to say is, I've been wondering why somebody hasn't been caught using it yet. ;-) Who knows how many sleepers are embedded in the installed Windows base, silently waiting for the attack command, or crunching away at somebody's password every night.
It's called the normal distribution. The worst programmers can't write networking code at all. Normal programmers write crappy code and the best coders get all frothy about all the crappy code out there.
Sad but true. Quality takes time, money, and good people. All scarce resources.
Very nice paper from Paxson.
On angle he neglects to mention is that the worm could only be the first wave of attack. The machines rapidly infected by a flash virus could easily be transformed into a massively parallel computing platform, into which a seconday attack program could be distributed in a matter of seconds. Such programs could then be used, for instance, to crack entry into strategically important machines that do not exhibit vulnerabilities directly exploitable by the first stage virus.
Scary. I've been wondering why someone hasn't done it yet.
Whether you choose to apply [copy]right to copying or distribution, in the end it does not matter. It is a question of having a control point. Which simply does not exist. Either you try to stop copying in the devices that can make digital copies (any gadget with a CPU or a DSP on it) or you try to find a point in the distribution chain where you can stop the distribution (such as a directory maintained by companies like Napster or AudioGalaxy).
The problem in either case is that the potential control points are beyond reach of national legislation. Sure, you can impose restrictions on digital devices and try to prevent imports of devices that break those restrictions. However, this is not enforcible internationally. All it takes is a single digital copy that finds its way into the Internet. Once the first copy has been made, it can be distributed en masse.
Then it becomes a question trying to find the control point for preventing its distribution. This is even more hopeless. Sure, you can go after the Napsters of this world but that won't stop the distribution. People will just find other ways to share and you can't go after every citizen who does so. It would simply be infeasible.
So, let the legislators have their little dreams. They are fighting against wind mills.
The movie industry will be the next one to feel the cold winds. Pretty soon full movies will be as convenient to swap as mp3's are today. While people will still go to theaters to see the movies on wide screen, VHS and DVD rentals and sales will suffer. Sill, record breaking mega budget movies may soon be a thing of the past, too.
In the end, I think, the non-copyable and non-distributable commodity is the artist itself. No-one can duplicate the creativity of a person. Hopefully this will eventually lead to the artists having more control over their works. The business model certainly could be envisioned and it would be more artist-to-consumer without unnecessary middle men.
IP routing is difficult enough without worrying about someone suddenly turning off to Albuquerque with your IP packets locked in the outbound queue.
Imagine if we had cars that could pass through each other and through people without any resistance. I would be the end of traffic jams!
It's not off-topic you moron, it's an analogy.
Spread spectrum modulation technologies are interference limited. The more power is pumped into the spectrum, the harder it is for a receiver to pick a signal out of the noise. If the signal is too weak compared to the noise, you're out of luck.
So, while radio waves pass through each other without doing any harm, it's no good to anyone if you can't pick up a signal. Granted, anyone can transmit as much as they like.
Imagine if we had cars that could pass through each other and through people without any resistance. I would be the end of traffic jams!
Talks a lot about RMS's tacticts for getting his acronym included with the kernel's name.
;-)
Just call it LIGNUX (pronounced leih-nux) and be done with it.
When can this be applied to office workers?
Theres a reason why System administrators will not touch MDK with a 400,000 foot pole.
... *warble* *warble* ... Murder Death Kill ... *warble* *warble* ...
... Murder Death Kill
...it was so slow!
:-)
Now the Google box with the cached page seems to be slashdotted as well.
MS et al actually gain from someone pirating their software rather than using OSS. Many people I know of priated MS Word, and if they didn't learn it this way and get used to it this way, they'd probably be using OpenOffice or whatever was cheapest for the jobs.
Funny thing is, OSS most probably reduces piracy in a major way, for the same reason it is eating into Microsoft's market share. Every great OSS application you go and download decreases your inclination go pirate some disgusting piece of bloatware for an OS you don't much care for anyway.
#include <iostream>
// Need a container?
#include <vector>
// You gotta love her
class Wife
{
public:
void GiveItToHerGood(iostream& orifice);
void Swallow() {}
bool Sated() { return false; }
};
class Wad {};
class Dribble : Wad {};
void Wife::GiveItToHerGood(iostream& orifice)
{
vector<long> penis;
bool cant_hold_it;
long fullLength = penis.max_size();
for (;;)
{
orifice << penis[fullLength];
orifice >> penis[fullLength];
if (cant_hold_it)
throw Wad();
}
};
void main()
{
iostream mouth, pussy, ass;
Wife wife;
do
{
try
{
wife.GiveItToHerGood(mouth);
wife.GiveItToHerGood(pussy);
wife.GiveItToHerGood(ass);
}
catch(Wad&)
{
try
{
wife.Swallow();
}
catch(Dribble&)
{
}
}
}
while (!wife.Sated());
}
the article was posted at 23.59GMT, thus making it LOOK legit
Could someone please enforce a rule that all April fool jokes must be posted when it's April 1st in every part of the world? It's just impossible to enjoy these things if they arrive on the wrong day!
P.S. Don't forget to adjust for daylight saving.
a model has to work in all cases to be valid
That is just ludicrous. A model is by definition a simplification, a scaled down version of the real thing. A very good model can get it right nine times out of ten but there is no such thing as a perfect model. The fact that even the best models are fallible does not make them worthless. The observation that a model is reasonably accurate in a certain type of scenario already tells us that the principles behind the model are sound, even if we're missing some factors.
Now, I'm no weatherman but climatological modeling cannot be that different from modeling in other areas.
The question is whether that model worked for climate change before and after that 2-year period that it supposedly got it right.
The key is to understand the limitations of a model in order not to misapply it.
I suppose you're arguing that a model that can predict a 2-year period does not yet tell us anything about climatological change because of the time scales involved. That doesn't make the model or the principles behind it invalid, it just makes the model limited.
If a number of such limited models pointed towards accelerated global warming caused by human civilization, I at least would be inclined to take it seriously.
maybe having Yoga Inside will make my system more agile
More likely it will make your system sit still a hum a little bit.
> What with going after a *yoga* school, all that bad karma could hammer them down.
Yes, but what are they to do? They can't just sit around and do nothing while the yogi run away with their trademark!