Go read "High Tech Heretic" (Second time I've plugged that book this week:) It is totally on spot with what you are saying. I have a ten week old, and I must totally agree.
In this room alone, I've got three machines. One is a triple boot (Dos 6.22, Windows '95, Linux), one Progeny box, and one 'doze '98 machine. Plans include two networked mp3 players (need to find the money for some lcd screens, and then I'm ready to go) and two networked mame cabinets (one standup, one cocktail). And that's before I put all of the wireless shwag I ganked from work into use.
What is somebody in the school supposed to teach my kid?
BTW, in discussions with my wife about when jr. is allowed to hit the net, my response was: as soon as he can figure out how to get root and give himself permission. I've got enough O'Reilly, etc. books that he should be able to figure that out:)
But you can bet that there are a bunch of people out there right now working on the next batch. It's so exciting to see your work on TV, isn't it?
I agree. What surprises me is that sircam and code red, despite much talking here, on CERT, etc. that these viruses still have problems (problems in that they haven't killed the net) But yes, sooner or later, (maybe in the next batch, as you said) someone is going to invent the true 'Net-killer.
OTOH, by infighting, the end products are arguably better than if there had been only competition against M$, Sun, etc.
As with most things in life, a balance must be struck. Yes, Gnome and KDE should have differences. Differences of design philosophy, goals, implementation... As long as they keep in mind the larger goal: world domination.
:)
But seriously, there is no way to have a discussion with M$ regarding technical merits. And so what if they get heated? Some of the best discussions I've had have been heated.
If everyone's itch were solved by one product, we'd all be using M$ Bob. They aren't, so we don't.
People who matter take Open Source seriously. And in the end, IBM (among others) are a voice that people still listen to, even if the face of M$.
I do think that some of the fighting (and I went back and read the threads on that mailing list) are pointless, and much along the lines of "I got my feelings hurt". And that is pure bullshit that accomplishes nothing. And yes, *that* sort of argument doesn't look good. Thankfully, most arguments are mostly substantive.
To answer your joke/non-joke, where I work, we only have to reboot our Win2k servers about once per month. WinNT about once per week (And they are set to do it slightly more often. Also note, MS apologists, that these were set up under no SP for Win2K and SP 4 for NT. We haven't changed those policies since newer SP's have come up. We just don't need the uptime. Also note that several of those machines are running non-MS software, or more than one MS service, two situations commonly claimed to cause NT/2K stability problems. FWIW, it seems that the problems are in garbage collection.)
Anyway, it's quite possible to run an MS server for a long time without a reboot. The other trick is, unless ALL of the MS servers were rebooted at the same time (and kept down long enough to clear out some packets from the nets) there will always be a machine ready to infect another, when the latter comes back up from the reboot.
I definately agree with your last comment. While these various and sundry viruses have seemed bad, they certainly don't seem engineered to 'bring down the internet'. There's far too many simple mistakes that were made (hard-wiring the White House IP for example. Your example of only hitting 100 other machines for another.)
For that matter, if one really wants to bring down the net, why not find a good, solid method to bring down Apache (preferably on any OS)? As has been stated, it runs far more sites.
I live near DC. Funny thing is, we've been putting up with those stories for a couple of weeks longer than the rest of the country.
Funny thing: my wife noticed this morning that there actually is 'new' news on the intern. It seems something 'new' pops up every time the media attention starts to die down.
And while I'm OT... CourtTV is having a special tonight to answer the question: "Should politicians not date interns?" Well no f***ing s**t!! These guys are married. OF COURSE they shouldn't be dating. Of course, I blame the women *cough* Hillary *cough* who stand by these shmucks time and time and time again.
But these two books are rather important. While not computer how-to books, they should be read by everyone who is thinking of picking up the other books:
1) High Tech Heretic : Reflections of a Computer Contrarian
By Clifford Stoll
Do we need computers everywhere, particularly in schools? Nope. Not necessarily. Although some of us have made them the be all and end all of our lives, it's not normal, and shouldn't be expected.
Easy to read, easy to understand, tough to refute.
2) In the Beginning...Was the Command Line
By Neal Stephenson
You don't need to program Apple Basic (or mainframe Fortran, or other archaic things) to be able to use computers. But this book is another nice, non-technical addition to a complete computer bookshelf.
End of the month. Gotta make that mortgage/Porsche payment before the repo man comes along (Yeah, I bet I could get modded +1 funny if I included a link to the/. article about the modern day repo guy, but I'm just too damned lazy)
Why is BSA doing this? I would be much happier if they would just bring back the Gold Star. Heck, even an A10 would be better. I'm sure that selling motorbikes is not as profitable as being an industry shill, but it sure is a lot more fun for the customers.
I got an Ask Slashdot posted about a year ago. I asked how to protect my company while still allowing some freedom and privacy for employees.
Slashdot didn't get it then, and they don't get it now.
Probably because of the duality of Slashdot members. On one hand, a bunch of neo-hippies, high-school/college students, and disgruntled cubicle drones who want everything and fuck the company. On the other hand are fearful middle managers who immediately scream "call the lawyers".
This is nothing new. Move along, move along.
Re:If you've seen it before, this'll throw you off
on
Akira Re-Released
·
· Score: 2
Actually, none of my local merchants carry things like this. By the time I factor in sales tax and the gas bill, having bought from Amazon with a discount they offered and free S&H netted me a couple of bucks.
BTW, sometimes comics shops go through totally different distributors, so maybe the packaging was a bit different.
I'm really looking forward to the subtitled version (I used to prefer dubbing, but with a deaf wife, you get used to words on the screen pretty quick)
What I really wonder is if the new translation is any more coherent, like the new translation of the comics. I had the entire Marvel (Epic) run of Akira, but after only three issues vastly prefer the new one. I almost understand what is happening.;)
Okay, nothing to add, except that UPS dropped mine off about an hour ago. (And someone was at home to get it, so don't try to look me up in Google to get my home address and steal it. You'll only find a trashcan, a PC-XT filled with concrete, and a garden gnome with a collection of photos from his round-the-world trip)
One more tidbit: anyone else see this in the theatre? Somehow, I managed to do that three times. I miss the Biograph in DC.
I suppose that since you noticed, it's too late to point out?:)
Seriously though, I was thinking about that after I posted, and I remember what I read (O'Reilly book?) saying how voluminous the gov't spec for SGML was, and that it was nearly unusable.
The real question is:"When is some brave soul going to insist that the United States government cease subsidizing Microsoft through the buying of their software?"
Finally, a voice of reason. What percent of M$ sales are to goverments? How many to the very governments now embroiled in the lawsuit? I wouldn't be surprised if it is 10-15%. Dropping those sales would cure M$ pretty freakin' quick.
Then take into account the additional 10-15% when contractors aren't reimbursed for M$ software, and/or when they are required to use the native StarOffice file format (for example) when submitting gov't bids, reports, etc.
Then eliminate the French and German government sales. It'll happen sooner or later. There goes another couple of points.
While the 10-15% from the initial government backoff wouldn't do a great deal, the ripple (or multiplier, for those of you who passed macroecon) effect would be large.
Heck, I'm not even sure that they need to go this far. Mandate a certain xml dtd (I think dtd is what I'm looking for) as the preferred document type for government information exchange, and get on with it. Who gives a rat's patootie about M$ if someone can make a Jabber plug-in that will create government standard output logs of chats?
Anyway, who the hell cares? Two lame proprietary technologies duking it out. Let them fight. I'll wait for the IETF standard. Until then, IRC and E-mail will get me by.
Kinda like IE and Netscape? Unfortunately, the standards bodies take too long. By the time something is decided, MSN/AIM will have the whole thing even more locked up than it is now.
I agree with the sentiment: open protocols (without proprietary extensions that prevent inter-operability) work best. But only if they are there from the beginning.
As far as the IM issue: I don't use 'em at all. I prefer to talk in person.
I agree. But... Sometimes, I rip on him. But I also rip on my good friends. It all depends on how the ripping occurs. FWIW, I've also written privately to him twice, and he's a really okay guy.
Some of his stuff is a bit over the top (Hellmouth seemed very repetitive after two installments. But maybe that's because I'm so far removed (10 years) from the situation he was talking about). And I almost never agree with his movie reviews. But this piece and the piece on the Pinkerton's were good.
Sure, there are a few factual errors in this article, namely about some specific legal points. But the law is in some ways a bigger technical minefield, with more nuances than the Linux kernel code. So he is bound to make mistakes.
But that doesn't diminish the message. No matter what technicality of the law Adobe uses to weasel out of culpability, the broad strokes are correct: Adobe got the FBI to arrest a Russian hacker for telling Adobe's corporate secrets.
So yes, his comparison to the Pentagon Papers wasn't 100% correct from a legal standpoint. But from the POV of the public, he is dead on.
(And more directly on point: DeCSS didn't matter except to the lunatic fringe. 2600 ditto. Everyone knew that Napster was being used primarily as a tool to steal (albeit from thieves). But this case is perhaps the first where
regular people are being hurt by the DMCA. The next case will hurt even more 'average joes'. As we go on, more and more of these cases will hurt the common man. And sooner or later, our elected officials will stand up and take notice. I just hope there are still Dmitry's around to write the software that will help us excercise our rights.)
Slashdot Mirror
Go read "High Tech Heretic" (Second time I've plugged that book this week:) It is totally on spot with what you are saying. I have a ten week old, and I must totally agree.
In this room alone, I've got three machines. One is a triple boot (Dos 6.22, Windows '95, Linux), one Progeny box, and one 'doze '98 machine. Plans include two networked mp3 players (need to find the money for some lcd screens, and then I'm ready to go) and two networked mame cabinets (one standup, one cocktail). And that's before I put all of the wireless shwag I ganked from work into use.
What is somebody in the school supposed to teach my kid?
BTW, in discussions with my wife about when jr. is allowed to hit the net, my response was: as soon as he can figure out how to get root and give himself permission. I've got enough O'Reilly, etc. books that he should be able to figure that out:)
I agree. What surprises me is that sircam and code red, despite much talking here, on CERT, etc. that these viruses still have problems (problems in that they haven't killed the net) But yes, sooner or later, (maybe in the next batch, as you said) someone is going to invent the true 'Net-killer.
OTOH, by infighting, the end products are arguably better than if there had been only competition against M$, Sun, etc.
As with most things in life, a balance must be struck. Yes, Gnome and KDE should have differences. Differences of design philosophy, goals, implementation... As long as they keep in mind the larger goal: world domination.
:)
But seriously, there is no way to have a discussion with M$ regarding technical merits. And so what if they get heated? Some of the best discussions I've had have been heated.
If everyone's itch were solved by one product, we'd all be using M$ Bob. They aren't, so we don't.
People who matter take Open Source seriously. And in the end, IBM (among others) are a voice that people still listen to, even if the face of M$.
I do think that some of the fighting (and I went back and read the threads on that mailing list) are pointless, and much along the lines of "I got my feelings hurt". And that is pure bullshit that accomplishes nothing. And yes, *that* sort of argument doesn't look good. Thankfully, most arguments are mostly substantive.
To answer your joke/non-joke, where I work, we only have to reboot our Win2k servers about once per month. WinNT about once per week (And they are set to do it slightly more often. Also note, MS apologists, that these were set up under no SP for Win2K and SP 4 for NT. We haven't changed those policies since newer SP's have come up. We just don't need the uptime. Also note that several of those machines are running non-MS software, or more than one MS service, two situations commonly claimed to cause NT/2K stability problems. FWIW, it seems that the problems are in garbage collection.)
Anyway, it's quite possible to run an MS server for a long time without a reboot. The other trick is, unless ALL of the MS servers were rebooted at the same time (and kept down long enough to clear out some packets from the nets) there will always be a machine ready to infect another, when the latter comes back up from the reboot.
I definately agree with your last comment. While these various and sundry viruses have seemed bad, they certainly don't seem engineered to 'bring down the internet'. There's far too many simple mistakes that were made (hard-wiring the White House IP for example. Your example of only hitting 100 other machines for another.)
For that matter, if one really wants to bring down the net, why not find a good, solid method to bring down Apache (preferably on any OS)? As has been stated, it runs far more sites.
If it is an encrypted signal (it is) then wouldn't the DMCA cover this?
One murder and no rapes? Guess you get your statistics from the same place that college campuses get their statistics on rape and assaults.
The ACLU: Where 90% of the Bill of Rights Matters
I live near DC. Funny thing is, we've been putting up with those stories for a couple of weeks longer than the rest of the country.
Funny thing: my wife noticed this morning that there actually is 'new' news on the intern. It seems something 'new' pops up every time the media attention starts to die down.
And while I'm OT... CourtTV is having a special tonight to answer the question: "Should politicians not date interns?" Well no f***ing s**t!! These guys are married. OF COURSE they shouldn't be dating. Of course, I blame the women *cough* Hillary *cough* who stand by these shmucks time and time and time again.
I suspect this is the cure.
But these two books are rather important. While not computer how-to books, they should be read by everyone who is thinking of picking up the other books:
1) High Tech Heretic : Reflections of a Computer Contrarian
By Clifford Stoll
Do we need computers everywhere, particularly in schools? Nope. Not necessarily. Although some of us have made them the be all and end all of our lives, it's not normal, and shouldn't be expected.
Easy to read, easy to understand, tough to refute.
2) In the Beginning...Was the Command Line
By Neal Stephenson
You don't need to program Apple Basic (or mainframe Fortran, or other archaic things) to be able to use computers. But this book is another nice, non-technical addition to a complete computer bookshelf.
End of the month. Gotta make that mortgage/Porsche payment before the repo man comes along (Yeah, I bet I could get modded +1 funny if I included a link to the /. article about the modern day repo guy, but I'm just too damned lazy)
Why is BSA doing this? I would be much happier if they would just bring back the Gold Star. Heck, even an A10 would be better. I'm sure that selling motorbikes is not as profitable as being an industry shill, but it sure is a lot more fun for the customers.
I got an Ask Slashdot posted about a year ago. I asked how to protect my company while still allowing some freedom and privacy for employees.
Slashdot didn't get it then, and they don't get it now.
Probably because of the duality of Slashdot members. On one hand, a bunch of neo-hippies, high-school/college students, and disgruntled cubicle drones who want everything and fuck the company. On the other hand are fearful middle managers who immediately scream "call the lawyers".
This is nothing new. Move along, move along.
Actually, none of my local merchants carry things like this. By the time I factor in sales tax and the gas bill, having bought from Amazon with a discount they offered and free S&H netted me a couple of bucks.
BTW, sometimes comics shops go through totally different distributors, so maybe the packaging was a bit different.
I think it was intentional. Try:
http://www.akira2001.com
I'm really looking forward to the subtitled version (I used to prefer dubbing, but with a deaf wife, you get used to words on the screen pretty quick)
;)
What I really wonder is if the new translation is any more coherent, like the new translation of the comics. I had the entire Marvel (Epic) run of Akira, but after only three issues vastly prefer the new one. I almost understand what is happening.
Okay, nothing to add, except that UPS dropped mine off about an hour ago. (And someone was at home to get it, so don't try to look me up in Google to get my home address and steal it. You'll only find a trashcan, a PC-XT filled with concrete, and a garden gnome with a collection of photos from his round-the-world trip)
One more tidbit: anyone else see this in the theatre? Somehow, I managed to do that three times. I miss the Biograph in DC.
I haven't yet, but was considering it when my company was in takeover talks. A little bit of job security.
Probably a bit illegal as well.
I suppose that since you noticed, it's too late to point out? :)
Seriously though, I was thinking about that after I posted, and I remember what I read (O'Reilly book?) saying how voluminous the gov't spec for SGML was, and that it was nearly unusable.
Finally, a voice of reason. What percent of M$ sales are to goverments? How many to the very governments now embroiled in the lawsuit? I wouldn't be surprised if it is 10-15%. Dropping those sales would cure M$ pretty freakin' quick.
Then take into account the additional 10-15% when contractors aren't reimbursed for M$ software, and/or when they are required to use the native StarOffice file format (for example) when submitting gov't bids, reports, etc.
Then eliminate the French and German government sales. It'll happen sooner or later. There goes another couple of points.
While the 10-15% from the initial government backoff wouldn't do a great deal, the ripple (or multiplier, for those of you who passed macroecon) effect would be large.
Heck, I'm not even sure that they need to go this far. Mandate a certain xml dtd (I think dtd is what I'm looking for) as the preferred document type for government information exchange, and get on with it. Who gives a rat's patootie about M$ if someone can make a Jabber plug-in that will create government standard output logs of chats?
BTDT, have the wedding ring and child to show for it.
Much gas was used, and many homework assignments skipped. And yes, IM was used.
But in the long run, F2F was more important and worth the bucks/time.
Kinda like IE and Netscape? Unfortunately, the standards bodies take too long. By the time something is decided, MSN/AIM will have the whole thing even more locked up than it is now.
I agree with the sentiment: open protocols (without proprietary extensions that prevent inter-operability) work best. But only if they are there from the beginning.
As far as the IM issue: I don't use 'em at all. I prefer to talk in person.
Okay, they released it for the Japan PS2. So get someone who got it to request the source, then port it.
(All non-trivial, but someone had to say it;)
I agree. But... Sometimes, I rip on him. But I also rip on my good friends. It all depends on how the ripping occurs. FWIW, I've also written privately to him twice, and he's a really okay guy.
Some of his stuff is a bit over the top (Hellmouth seemed very repetitive after two installments. But maybe that's because I'm so far removed (10 years) from the situation he was talking about). And I almost never agree with his movie reviews. But this piece and the piece on the Pinkerton's were good.
Sure, there are a few factual errors in this article, namely about some specific legal points. But the law is in some ways a bigger technical minefield, with more nuances than the Linux kernel code. So he is bound to make mistakes.
But that doesn't diminish the message. No matter what technicality of the law Adobe uses to weasel out of culpability, the broad strokes are correct: Adobe got the FBI to arrest a Russian hacker for telling Adobe's corporate secrets.
So yes, his comparison to the Pentagon Papers wasn't 100% correct from a legal standpoint. But from the POV of the public, he is dead on.
(And more directly on point: DeCSS didn't matter except to the lunatic fringe. 2600 ditto. Everyone knew that Napster was being used primarily as a tool to steal (albeit from thieves). But this case is perhaps the first where
regular people are being hurt by the DMCA. The next case will hurt even more 'average joes'. As we go on, more and more of these cases will hurt the common man. And sooner or later, our elected officials will stand up and take notice. I just hope there are still Dmitry's around to write the software that will help us excercise our rights.)
If you turn up a new shirt maker (or do a run yourself), I'd like to know. Heck, I'd be curious to know who has the copyright on the graphic now.