"I'm a gamer, what's the best PC for me?" Okay, do you play at LAN parties, do you play RTS, FPS, sol.exe?
Similarly, what does it mean 'she's an artist'? Does she work with photo manipulation, is she a painter, is she a playwright?
The thing is, the computer is a means, not an end. You have to figure out what medium she is working in. I'll assume it's photo manipulation, given your mention of slide scanners. Now you have to figure out what program(s) she likes. Let her try the GIMP. Let her try Photoshop. Let her try whatever other things are out there. THAT is what should decide your platform.
If she likes some Mac program most, and a little bit she likes the GIMP, get her a Mac (your preference be damned) and go with it. Say she likes some WinXX program. Go with that.
A couple of things: shift money heavily towards the monitor. As a matter of fact, get her to go up to $1500 so that you can get a larger monitor. Even if you have to skimp on processor. And load it with RAM (as much as the machine will take) and then pack in a gigantic hard drive. Probably want a cd-burner of some sort. The difference between a $300 processor and a $100 processor is far less than the difference between $300 of RAM and $100 of RAM, especially in perceived performance.
Pay attention to your user, and try to show a little less geeky arrogance next time.
BTW, an iMac can be had for $799. Have you done any research, or did you just pan the Mac outright?
Final thought: the software isn't cheap. Has your friend included this in the $1000? If she hasn't, you are likely going to be stuck with either Linux/GIMP or iMac/builtin stuff.
Actually, my only holdings are about $500 in a couple of 401k accounts. (Having just reviewed the annual report, holdings in tech companies are rather low, and holdings in linux companies are nonexistant.)
Read my other post. The stock was totally and incredibly overvalued at $200+.
You sound like an angry man who bought some of those same stocks when they were overvalued, and are now pissed that you didn't get out earlier.
Any rational person could tell you that the IPO was totally incorrect. Most of the dot-bomb IPO's were incorrect. Following traditional and time tested valuation policies, the market failed and is now correct.
Shoot, forgot to respond to your last sentence: Taco/Roblimo will never/have never given timely, straight up answers to any question asked about slashdot.
With your userID, I don't know if you were reading before the slashcode was released. Took forever. When everyone bitched about it, CT's answer was "every time someone asked for the source, I pushed it back a day". That is a striking example of his maturity.
This board isn't run by good people. It's run by petty tyrants. The success is a result of the readers/posters (even the FP'ers, trolls, etc.). It was/is largely in the right place at the right time, and attracted the right people. It has grown beyond the PTB, and they are having trouble coming to grips with that.
Don't feel like finding the link, but blocking stories by JK is not sufficient. I think it was WRT movie reviews or something. Couldn't tell you for sure, because I don't block him (some stuff is good, and the blurb on the front page tells me whether or not I want to read the article).
But to your broader question... I'm not sure that he does fit in. Not very well at any rate. I don't know his financial arrangements, but I imagine that he actually does make money for VA. I mean, there's at least one extra ad view for each person who posts "What is this Jon Katz garbage?!" and another ad view for "Just go to preferences and block articles by JK" and another for the people who go to preferences and block it...
The idea sounds reasonable. If the original poster would state why he wants Linux, it would help. If he wants free software, then MacOS wouldn't work (of course, then he shouldn't be asking about flash.) If he wants to be MS-free, then this is a reasonable alternative.
Now, as to 'stealing' BSD... It hasn't been done. They've followed the bsd license, and that is that.
Looking up LNUX shows that it has a moderate downslope, then being relatively flat since the beginning of September, with a recent moderate rise.
This is not totally unlike the Dow Jones Ind. Avg., which is recovering quite nicely from the Sept. 11th events, and is even making up ground lost since the recession started and the dot-bomb era.
Now, I am not sure that VA is going to do well. But the stock market doesn't agree. At this time, the stock is up ~3%
Because Cliff added it to the submission. I just started using Konqueror, and have been quite annoyed at the macromedia pop up windows (thought I hit a porn site accidentally the first time it happened). How/where do I disable this?
Yes, I am too lazy to RTFM and do a Google search.
No, actually, this IS a bad release. Really. It breaks software that people are paying for (EQ Classic). It doesn't work as described (your trials and tribulations getting it installed are but one of a myriad of install problems). Day one patches are NOT the signs of a good release (kernel 2.4.15 and 2.4.11 anyone?)
Had Verant been busy earlier, and not rushed a pre Xmas release, they wouldn't be busy right now.
This is bad. This is bad software. This is bad beta-testing.
First of all, you are a puss. If you are installing one of those things, you have an automatic. Second, real mods are not 'installing a remote starter'. It's squeezing a big freakin' engine into a little dinky car. (Saw a Chevy big block crammed into a Nash Met a few years ago in HotRod).
Second, I'd prefer a v-8 with rear drive. But with a family, a Mustang/Camaro doesn't cut it. So I'll be driving FWD I-4 or v-6 engines with tons of electronic controls.
Now, for just a handful of engines with which I am slightly familiar:
Duratec v-6 (ford contour): superchargers (for some models), nitrous.
Honda I-4 (civics, CRV's): block and head upgrades, turbos, superchargers, more handling kits and brake kits than you can shake a stick at.
VW 4's and 6's: see above.
See, there's tons of stuff available for certain cars. Real stuff. And of course, if you like remote starters, neon trim, and 100w headlights, you can always go to JC Whitney.
And if you want traditional cars, they are available aplenty. 60's Mustangs and Camaros. 80's BMWs. And if you like old iron, there are tons of component (kit) cars available. Any ford up to WWII. Almost any Chevy of the same vintage. I've seen kits to put a '55 chevy on a late model Caprice.
The enthusiast magazines have been asking this question for years. And the answer has always come back a resounding 'NO'.
While this will in no way jeapardize (sp?) my use of Debian, I must say that I agree with many of your points. Moving the docs to non-free should be nearly trivial. This helps users the most. And because of what I've gotten out of Debian, I thought about helping to write the docs. But clicking on the links in the/. story, I saw no list of the docs in question. So, how am I to help?
Further, if I were the author of some old docs, how would I know if my docs were not in compliance?
Seems that there are some better ways to get through this tempest in a teapot.
Re:Writing Linux viruses is easy (slightly OT)
on
Future Of IDS
·
· Score: 2
I read the article you linked to, and I'd have to reject it. It was an interesting idea, but a poor article (okay, that doesn't in any way mean it wouldn't be posted to/.)
First, the guy who gave that quote is from McAfee. They are complacent. They sell loads of software for one platform, and have no interest in writing software for Linux. Scaring people away from it will keep down the market. Either that, or they don't know how to improve upon the existing security.
Second, advocating security through obscurity again backs up their market share. It's also been proven time and again to not work.
This is not to say that the article wasn't without it's good points. Social engineering can work just as well with Linux users as Winxx users. As the Linux base grows, they will become a more welcome target (especially if they are a firewall protecting all of those juicy WinXY boxes behind them). And yes, Li0N and Ramen 'prove' that Linux is not 100% secure. But only a few psychos claim that anyway.
The reason that I think the general premise of the article (Linux will see big cracks soons) is that doing cracks on M$ stuff is so trivially easy at this point, and it hits a lot of machines. Spreading stuff via.vbs scripts makes anybody a hacker (just like writing vbs programs makes anybody a programmer). Hitting a bazillion Outlook users is way easy. The kidz doing these things aren't interested in seeing how something works, or how to break it. (IOW, they are reading 2600 'for the pictures', not the articles;)
As long as Linux (and BSD and others) remain non-trivial to crack, M$ will remain the platform of choice.
But why the big fuss over Linux? As the article (or maybe a comment afterwards) mentioned, to get one of the RTOS distros/modifications costs money. So the licensing is a wash.
Except for some specific platforms, it's hardly optimized. So there is a great deal of vendor specific work to be done. So, marginal time savings, if any.
You aren't going to run Samba/Apache/LICQ on an embedded device, so the software availability doesn't really matter.
Now, the comment from the guy from Intel seemed to make sense: in certain areas on certain hardware, Linux is a good thing. Unfortunately, this article is largely a waste, as it ignores the breadth of embedded systems, and attempts to paint the entire Embedded Linux effort with one stroke. Were the author to say that one processor with one OS were the end-all/be-all of embedded systems, he'd get laughed out of a job (one would hope).
Saying that one OS has no/little place in embedded is merely the other side of this ludicrous coin. (BTW, again, I know next to nothing about embedded systems. If I can pick up on these glaring flaws, why should anyone give this article the time of day?)
According to their fact, it says that members would have to pay fees. Specifically, it says that "There are fees for Alliance membership at various levels that will be used to drive all aspects of this new solution." I don't see where it makes a distinction between companies or users. I also don't see (again, on that page) where it exempts users. And further, I don't see where it specifies what constitutes a user.
Until they say something to the effect that "all standards will be patent-free, and anyone will be able to develop programs and systems without incurring cost" I'll assume that this is a non-free system.
(Again, I have no problem paying for authentication services, and even to pay for a "Program Foo is a Liberty Alliance Certified Program".)
Fat chance at getting sign on. I've had a Mobil speedpass for a couple of years. And I can only use it at Mobil/Exxon stations.
But it's not a bad start. Add the ability to go to any GM shop (or independent) in the country and let the car pay for repairs itself (provided it's not been stolen:)
We've actually got two people (myself and another) doing the computer stuff here. Both of us know not to touch stuff we are clueless about. It works fairly well, except that sometimes a user has a problem, and the first person to get the call has to get the other to fix it. But, with only 50, it's not too bad.
Given that this is a fairly short term thing (the computer setup for the olympics) I must say that adding security through obscurity as another layer is probably a good idea. In no way should anyone count on it, but it can't hurt. What would really help would be to document everything for release later, so that it can be reviewed prior to 2004.
I live near Baltimore/Washington, and say a prayer of thanks every time we don't get the Olympics. I mean, we just built about $1billion in stadiums (two in Baltimore, one near DC) and, uhh... We haven't gotten quite that much benefit out of them. I can only imagine the insanity of the Olympic games.
My cousin lived near Atlanta. Had a bunch of leave saved up (gov't job). Took it all during the games. She wasn't alone.
There is no reason not to serve basic layouts (menubars, graphics, etc.) from thttpd, khttpd, or some of that sort. Let the 'content' be in the form of single stories placed within the framework. Run/served from a different machine.
I mean, this is hardly rocket science, and it certainly isn't grounbreaking. It's merely applying existing tech and solutions.
McClung said the Salt Lake City Olympic computer system, comprised of 4,500 PCs and 550 servers, is the most complex network he's ever seen.
Urmmm... I work in a small company (50 employees) so I've never seen really big networks. But somehow, 2000 computers doesn't seem like that compares in any way to various military and Fortune 500 networks. By an order or two of magnitude.
So, is somebody who has never seen (let alone worked with) this many machines the right guy for the job? Sounds like he is in over his head a bit.
(Now, if this IS an incredibly huge/large network, please bitchslap me)
Slashdot Mirror
No big deal. I must admit my 'angry man' comment was also out of line.
You don't give enough info. For example:
"I'm a gamer, what's the best PC for me?" Okay, do you play at LAN parties, do you play RTS, FPS, sol.exe?
Similarly, what does it mean 'she's an artist'? Does she work with photo manipulation, is she a painter, is she a playwright?
The thing is, the computer is a means, not an end. You have to figure out what medium she is working in. I'll assume it's photo manipulation, given your mention of slide scanners. Now you have to figure out what program(s) she likes. Let her try the GIMP. Let her try Photoshop. Let her try whatever other things are out there. THAT is what should decide your platform.
If she likes some Mac program most, and a little bit she likes the GIMP, get her a Mac (your preference be damned) and go with it. Say she likes some WinXX program. Go with that.
A couple of things: shift money heavily towards the monitor. As a matter of fact, get her to go up to $1500 so that you can get a larger monitor. Even if you have to skimp on processor. And load it with RAM (as much as the machine will take) and then pack in a gigantic hard drive. Probably want a cd-burner of some sort. The difference between a $300 processor and a $100 processor is far less than the difference between $300 of RAM and $100 of RAM, especially in perceived performance.
Pay attention to your user, and try to show a little less geeky arrogance next time.
BTW, an iMac can be had for $799. Have you done any research, or did you just pan the Mac outright?
Final thought: the software isn't cheap. Has your friend included this in the $1000? If she hasn't, you are likely going to be stuck with either Linux/GIMP or iMac/builtin stuff.
Mac OSX is not free software. I didn't mean to imply that free software wouldn't run on Mac OSX.
Sorry about the confusion.
I don't agree with the evaluation that the parent to your post made. But there is no way in hell it should be flamebait. It's part of a discussion.
Actually, my only holdings are about $500 in a couple of 401k accounts. (Having just reviewed the annual report, holdings in tech companies are rather low, and holdings in linux companies are nonexistant.)
Read my other post. The stock was totally and incredibly overvalued at $200+.
You sound like an angry man who bought some of those same stocks when they were overvalued, and are now pissed that you didn't get out earlier.
Any rational person could tell you that the IPO was totally incorrect. Most of the dot-bomb IPO's were incorrect. Following traditional and time tested valuation policies, the market failed and is now correct.
Shoot, forgot to respond to your last sentence: Taco/Roblimo will never/have never given timely, straight up answers to any question asked about slashdot.
With your userID, I don't know if you were reading before the slashcode was released. Took forever. When everyone bitched about it, CT's answer was "every time someone asked for the source, I pushed it back a day". That is a striking example of his maturity.
This board isn't run by good people. It's run by petty tyrants. The success is a result of the readers/posters (even the FP'ers, trolls, etc.). It was/is largely in the right place at the right time, and attracted the right people. It has grown beyond the PTB, and they are having trouble coming to grips with that.
(Go ahead, mod me down. I've got karma to burn.)
Don't feel like finding the link, but blocking stories by JK is not sufficient. I think it was WRT movie reviews or something. Couldn't tell you for sure, because I don't block him (some stuff is good, and the blurb on the front page tells me whether or not I want to read the article).
But to your broader question... I'm not sure that he does fit in. Not very well at any rate. I don't know his financial arrangements, but I imagine that he actually does make money for VA. I mean, there's at least one extra ad view for each person who posts "What is this Jon Katz garbage?!" and another ad view for "Just go to preferences and block articles by JK" and another for the people who go to preferences and block it...
The idea sounds reasonable. If the original poster would state why he wants Linux, it would help. If he wants free software, then MacOS wouldn't work (of course, then he shouldn't be asking about flash.) If he wants to be MS-free, then this is a reasonable alternative.
Now, as to 'stealing' BSD... It hasn't been done. They've followed the bsd license, and that is that.
Umm, what stock chart are you looking at?
Looking up LNUX shows that it has a moderate downslope, then being relatively flat since the beginning of September, with a recent moderate rise.
This is not totally unlike the Dow Jones Ind. Avg., which is recovering quite nicely from the Sept. 11th events, and is even making up ground lost since the recession started and the dot-bomb era.
Now, I am not sure that VA is going to do well. But the stock market doesn't agree. At this time, the stock is up ~3%
Because Cliff added it to the submission. I just started using Konqueror, and have been quite annoyed at the macromedia pop up windows (thought I hit a porn site accidentally the first time it happened). How/where do I disable this?
Yes, I am too lazy to RTFM and do a Google search.
It looks like sol.exe is really gonna rock on these things.
No, actually, this IS a bad release. Really. It breaks software that people are paying for (EQ Classic). It doesn't work as described (your trials and tribulations getting it installed are but one of a myriad of install problems). Day one patches are NOT the signs of a good release (kernel 2.4.15 and 2.4.11 anyone?)
Had Verant been busy earlier, and not rushed a pre Xmas release, they wouldn't be busy right now.
This is bad. This is bad software. This is bad beta-testing.
First of all, you are a puss. If you are installing one of those things, you have an automatic. Second, real mods are not 'installing a remote starter'. It's squeezing a big freakin' engine into a little dinky car. (Saw a Chevy big block crammed into a Nash Met a few years ago in HotRod).
Second, I'd prefer a v-8 with rear drive. But with a family, a Mustang/Camaro doesn't cut it. So I'll be driving FWD I-4 or v-6 engines with tons of electronic controls.
Now, for just a handful of engines with which I am slightly familiar:
Zetec I-4 (ford focus): turbos, superchargers, nitrous.
Duratec v-6 (ford contour): superchargers (for some models), nitrous.
Honda I-4 (civics, CRV's): block and head upgrades, turbos, superchargers, more handling kits and brake kits than you can shake a stick at.
VW 4's and 6's: see above.
See, there's tons of stuff available for certain cars. Real stuff. And of course, if you like remote starters, neon trim, and 100w headlights, you can always go to JC Whitney.
And if you want traditional cars, they are available aplenty. 60's Mustangs and Camaros. 80's BMWs. And if you like old iron, there are tons of component (kit) cars available. Any ford up to WWII. Almost any Chevy of the same vintage. I've seen kits to put a '55 chevy on a late model Caprice.
The enthusiast magazines have been asking this question for years. And the answer has always come back a resounding 'NO'.
While this will in no way jeapardize (sp?) my use of Debian, I must say that I agree with many of your points. Moving the docs to non-free should be nearly trivial. This helps users the most. And because of what I've gotten out of Debian, I thought about helping to write the docs. But clicking on the links in the /. story, I saw no list of the docs in question. So, how am I to help?
Further, if I were the author of some old docs, how would I know if my docs were not in compliance?
Seems that there are some better ways to get through this tempest in a teapot.
I read the article you linked to, and I'd have to reject it. It was an interesting idea, but a poor article (okay, that doesn't in any way mean it wouldn't be posted to /.)
.vbs scripts makes anybody a hacker (just like writing vbs programs makes anybody a programmer). Hitting a bazillion Outlook users is way easy. The kidz doing these things aren't interested in seeing how something works, or how to break it. (IOW, they are reading 2600 'for the pictures', not the articles;)
First, the guy who gave that quote is from McAfee. They are complacent. They sell loads of software for one platform, and have no interest in writing software for Linux. Scaring people away from it will keep down the market. Either that, or they don't know how to improve upon the existing security.
Second, advocating security through obscurity again backs up their market share. It's also been proven time and again to not work.
This is not to say that the article wasn't without it's good points. Social engineering can work just as well with Linux users as Winxx users. As the Linux base grows, they will become a more welcome target (especially if they are a firewall protecting all of those juicy WinXY boxes behind them). And yes, Li0N and Ramen 'prove' that Linux is not 100% secure. But only a few psychos claim that anyway.
The reason that I think the general premise of the article (Linux will see big cracks soons) is that doing cracks on M$ stuff is so trivially easy at this point, and it hits a lot of machines. Spreading stuff via
As long as Linux (and BSD and others) remain non-trivial to crack, M$ will remain the platform of choice.
Two questions:
First, have you seen 'hacks' in other source code? If so, were they labeled as such? If not... Well damn. That's impressive.
Second, how responsive are other OS developers for making changes in their source?
(Not trying to flame. I realize it can be taken that way. I really want to know if things are THAT different.)
First, I'm not an embedded systems programmer.
But why the big fuss over Linux? As the article (or maybe a comment afterwards) mentioned, to get one of the RTOS distros/modifications costs money. So the licensing is a wash.
Except for some specific platforms, it's hardly optimized. So there is a great deal of vendor specific work to be done. So, marginal time savings, if any.
You aren't going to run Samba/Apache/LICQ on an embedded device, so the software availability doesn't really matter.
Now, the comment from the guy from Intel seemed to make sense: in certain areas on certain hardware, Linux is a good thing. Unfortunately, this article is largely a waste, as it ignores the breadth of embedded systems, and attempts to paint the entire Embedded Linux effort with one stroke. Were the author to say that one processor with one OS were the end-all/be-all of embedded systems, he'd get laughed out of a job (one would hope).
Saying that one OS has no/little place in embedded is merely the other side of this ludicrous coin. (BTW, again, I know next to nothing about embedded systems. If I can pick up on these glaring flaws, why should anyone give this article the time of day?)
"I've changed it to 'Illuminate'". ;-)
Damn. All I did was learn how to crochet.
According to their fact, it says that members would have to pay fees. Specifically, it says that "There are fees for Alliance membership at various levels that will be used to drive all aspects of this new solution." I don't see where it makes a distinction between companies or users. I also don't see (again, on that page) where it exempts users. And further, I don't see where it specifies what constitutes a user.
Until they say something to the effect that "all standards will be patent-free, and anyone will be able to develop programs and systems without incurring cost" I'll assume that this is a non-free system.
(Again, I have no problem paying for authentication services, and even to pay for a "Program Foo is a Liberty Alliance Certified Program".)
Fat chance at getting sign on. I've had a Mobil speedpass for a couple of years. And I can only use it at Mobil/Exxon stations.
But it's not a bad start. Add the ability to go to any GM shop (or independent) in the country and let the car pay for repairs itself (provided it's not been stolen:)
We've actually got two people (myself and another) doing the computer stuff here. Both of us know not to touch stuff we are clueless about. It works fairly well, except that sometimes a user has a problem, and the first person to get the call has to get the other to fix it. But, with only 50, it's not too bad.
Given that this is a fairly short term thing (the computer setup for the olympics) I must say that adding security through obscurity as another layer is probably a good idea. In no way should anyone count on it, but it can't hurt. What would really help would be to document everything for release later, so that it can be reviewed prior to 2004.
I live near Baltimore/Washington, and say a prayer of thanks every time we don't get the Olympics. I mean, we just built about $1billion in stadiums (two in Baltimore, one near DC) and, uhh... We haven't gotten quite that much benefit out of them. I can only imagine the insanity of the Olympic games.
My cousin lived near Atlanta. Had a bunch of leave saved up (gov't job). Took it all during the games. She wasn't alone.
(BTW, nice flag)
There is no reason not to serve basic layouts (menubars, graphics, etc.) from thttpd, khttpd, or some of that sort. Let the 'content' be in the form of single stories placed within the framework. Run/served from a different machine.
I mean, this is hardly rocket science, and it certainly isn't grounbreaking. It's merely applying existing tech and solutions.
Urmmm... I work in a small company (50 employees) so I've never seen really big networks. But somehow, 2000 computers doesn't seem like that compares in any way to various military and Fortune 500 networks. By an order or two of magnitude.
So, is somebody who has never seen (let alone worked with) this many machines the right guy for the job? Sounds like he is in over his head a bit.
(Now, if this IS an incredibly huge/large network, please bitchslap me)