The patent does explicitly state "registry key" so they may only be trying to exclude other companies that try to make package managers for Windows. When Linux starts using the word "registry" for a central place of storing all system config info and a few billion other things, you may see a news report where I strangle several developers...
Yeah those commercials were sick. Interrupted the one night of TV viewing I actually have nowadays. He really should've started it with "Hi, I'm Bill Gates, and I'm here to kiss the collective ass of America."
Oh well...gotta love how he ended it with "The best is yet to come!"...guess he's referring to a win2k service pack...I hope so...there's a couple "features" that are really pissing me off at work.
Damn right...su functionality is definitely one place where I want my system to act like a heavy-handed hateful dictator from hell.
There's a reason the root account is referred to as the SUPERUSER....he is supposed to have unwarranted power over other users.
I can't think of many situations where having su capability from any user would have any advantage over the proper method except perhaps a little convenience. And we're unix people...since when did we give a damn about convenience?
It's all about choice...which is (in my opinion, at least) a big part of what open source is all about. OS A has something you want? Use it. OS B pisses you off? Don't use it. Kinda like OS C but you feel it could be done a little better? Modify it.
As far as the "problem" you had with your user account, you probably could have guessed that a proactively secure OS would not put a user account into an su-enabled group by default, and you could have placed that user in the proper group before going a few steps further then getting all pissy about it.
Just remember kids, nobody's forcing you to use one OS or the other, and that's the damn point.
Quite simply, as long as the OpenBSD project stays true to its goals of a proactively secure open-source OS, I don't care if Theo eats children for breakfast and breaks the legs of people in nursing homes for fun. As long as it doesn't affect the code, I'm all for it.
Umm...why the hell would Mattel release any version of the program, closed-source or not? The whole reason they're fighting this thing is to keep it away from the public. They don't want the rights so they can turn around and release it themselves. What would be the point in Mattel giving out the tool that shows the problems with their product?
When you tell a potential client that the certifications are "largely marketing ploys", I can tell you right now that warning bells are going to go off in their heads, cause it sure as hell is going to sound to them like you're trying to downplay your lack of certifications. I know it's mostly marketing, you know it too, but the CLIENT does not. Why should the client believe you? As far as the examples of previous work, I brought up that point as well.
As to the building analogy...the problem is that there are no professional standards yet for the tech industry. So, the client looks for the next best thing: vendor certifications.
The central problem is that most clients you or I or anyone else in the tech industry will deal with for at least a few more years do not take into account how new this industry is. They want to be assured of that which is not really assurable yet. Throw in the thousands of crackpot tech companies out there that truly do not have a clue, and the horror stories they generate, and a client feels that he must look for some sort of official statement of qualification.
Once again, I'm not saying certifications are a good thing. The industry is just too young for potential clients to just cross their fingers and hope they don't get fired if you fuck up.
Knowledgeable customers are few and far between. After all, isn't that why they're hiring you or your company to do the job for them? I'm not trying to say that certifications are inherently good or bad, but certifications do have a perceived value to the customer. You don't fund the construction of a building without making sure the contractors are licensed and bonded. For the vast majority of people who make the decisions of who to hire to build their network, they understand as little about networking as they do about construction. They need something to look at that says "these guys are not complete morons." About the only thing that tends to offset the need for certifications in my experience is letting potential customers talk to previous customers where similar work was done.
It's not gross, it's a far better way of handling the situation. In the times before civilization, most humans used every bit of an animal that they could. Eat the meat, and make things out of the rest. Clothes out of the hide, tools out of the bone, etc. Then we became "civilized." It became cheaper for us to just take the meat and dispose of the rest unused.
Now we get to revert a little bit. We'll actually be using more of the animal than we would otherwise. Grill me up some of those Genetically Altered Hot Dogs!
I told ya...it's alliteration. If you managed to avoid literature classes growing up (lucky bastard!), it's the intentional reuse of consonant sounds. They wanted names that would tie the company and the product together in the minds of the consumer. Say each of these 10 times:
"Matrox G400"
"Matrox Millenium G400"
Sure, the first would be just as good a functional identifier for the product. But the second "flows" better. It sounds more pleasing to the ear. This, subconciously, causes the consumer to think of smooth-flowing graphics performance. We also see a hint of corporate philosophy here; Matrox has traditionally been the card for high-end graphics users, not the hardcore gamer. All the other major players in the 3D card industry use terms symbolizing power, speed, explosive nature, etc...Matrox counters that with a name that seems to say "when you're ready to grow up, come to us."
Good god I'm starting to sound like a marketing guy. Please shoot me.
It's a marketing thing. Having a central theme for a product line generates greater brand recognition. Personally I kind of like these telltale signs in the names of products. It increases the likelihood that one of my family members will say one of the key words ("Blaster", "Viper", etc) and get me one step closer to remotely diagnosing their system for them. Don't you just love relatives with computers?
The histories of some of the themes are fun to think about. Creative uses blaster because...well, they always have. ATI uses "angry" words because they're pissed they can't make a competitive graphics board anymore. Matrox is going for the alliteration angle. 3Dfx wants you to think it's all voodoo magic. And STB (pre-merger days, at least) just picks random speed-related words (velocity, nitro, etc), throws in "3D" or a random big number (and maybe even the wor "PRO!"), and crosses their fingers and hopes that you'll think it really is good hardware!
Have you ever actually played with an N64 controller? If your hand is anything at all larger than "normal", even by just a small amount, you will have severe cramping after a while just from holding the damn thing. I can't stand to play any N64 game for more than a half hour or so thanks to the controller design. And this is coming from the kid who came home from some oral surgery, plugged up the 2600, and played Defender for literally 8 hours straight, handing the controller off to my sister once so I could go to the bathroom.
Actually, there were some 16k games as well. Plus, if you had the Supercharger addon, you could run games that were 32k...maybe 64k too, but i'm not entirely sure.
Yeah, that's one thing that sucks about the TI...that TV adaptor is evil. Those flimsy U-connectors always broke off, and you could only strip the wire down for so long.
If you're interested in getting your TI back into working order, you can do it pretty easily. I frequently find TI tv adapters at flea markets and thrift stores, and usually really cheap since they have no idea what the hell it is. Heck once I bought a system (computer+power supply+tv adapter+2 or 3 carts) for $1. Also, if you want to avoid the flea markets, there are a number of people who buy and sell classic video game and computer systems...just search for it...it has a large presence on ebay as well. You'll pay more that way, but not a lot more usually.
Speaking of 8-track shells, I've actually found cartridges for the Fairchild Channel F game system in thrift store 8 track bins...on more than one occasion.
Parsec was also a 2D side-scrolling space shooter game for the TI-99/4A home computer...a computer that holds a special place in my heart as it was the first I ever owned. Nothing spectacular in the graphics department, but insanely fun and addicting. And, if you had the speech synthesizer attatched to the TI, it even talked to you: "ENEMY SHIPS APPROACHING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!"
There's so many dirty glasses, plates, bottles, and other assorted trash around my (non-covered) box that there's gotta be all sorts of microbes growing inside my box...and given the fast evolutionary cycle of microorganisms, I'm sure there's at least a few that have learned to integrate with my machine. At least it gives me something to blame wierd shit on.
Why not buy a small, fast laptop? Well, price first of all...while you can get low to mid range laptops pretty cheap nowadays, the sort of laptop I'd want as a desktop replacement will still fall in the $3000-$4000 range.
The main thing for me about laptops has always been the fact that if something blows up, I can't just run down to the local computer shop and pick up a replacement part. I have the same issue with integrated-in-the-mobo stuff...if my motherboard's built-in sound blows, I don't want to have to buy another motherboard; I want to buy another sound card and be done with it. I own a p166 laptop, and I'm extremely careful with it because I don't want to have to send it off to "my nearest authorized Fujitsu repair center" to get it fixed.
True, but it's a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't scenario. If they had chosen 50 sites on a truly random basis, then proponents of censorware would say that the choices were not in fact random, but chosen specifically to try to undermine the reputation of the software. It's lame, yes, but choosing anything other than an arbitrary range (not a random selection) would just give the opposition something to spin.
Call it elitism if you like, whatever floats your boat. Apparently you've never worked support for any length of time...I have no problem saying that I prefer an OS that doesn't cater to the general user. Can't stand all that user friendly bullshit. I don't care how trimmed down you make it, it still uses up more resources for something I don't need/want. Take your graphical installs and shove them up your ass. I only run X when I actually need something graphical. This isn't like most cases of elitism, where it is infinitely hard for the lesser class to become part of the preferred class...they can go and learn the shit themselves and move beyond their little protected world.
My hardware is not 10 years old, in fact most of it is less than a year old (except the little p120 that serves as my gateway/firewall box). All quite well supported, too.
That spotlighting that Linux and BeOS are enjoying now wasn't there until quite recently.
Besides, those of us in the BSD camp will continue to love our OS's just the same. A piece of the spotlight would be nice, but the BSD community will continue to exist regardless. In the meantime, the Linux emulation gets better and better...so when some company makes it for Linux, we can run it too.
On a side note, you seem to be the type that wants Linux to win on all fronts, including the desktop. I say screw the desktop market. I don't want the demands of the populace at large causing the REAL decline of my OS of choice.
Well, the users at this site also have email service through my company, and aren't (supposed) to be using their computers for anything other than business purposes...besides, if it's their personal AOL email they want, they can check that through AOL's website.
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The patent does explicitly state "registry key" so they may only be trying to exclude other companies that try to make package managers for Windows. When Linux starts using the word "registry" for a central place of storing all system config info and a few billion other things, you may see a news report where I strangle several developers...
Yeah those commercials were sick. Interrupted the one night of TV viewing I actually have nowadays. He really should've started it with "Hi, I'm Bill Gates, and I'm here to kiss the collective ass of America."
Oh well...gotta love how he ended it with "The best is yet to come!"...guess he's referring to a win2k service pack...I hope so...there's a couple "features" that are really pissing me off at work.
Damn right...su functionality is definitely one place where I want my system to act like a heavy-handed hateful dictator from hell.
There's a reason the root account is referred to as the SUPERUSER....he is supposed to have unwarranted power over other users.
I can't think of many situations where having su capability from any user would have any advantage over the proper method except perhaps a little convenience. And we're unix people...since when did we give a damn about convenience?
It's all about choice...which is (in my opinion, at least) a big part of what open source is all about. OS A has something you want? Use it. OS B pisses you off? Don't use it. Kinda like OS C but you feel it could be done a little better? Modify it.
As far as the "problem" you had with your user account, you probably could have guessed that a proactively secure OS would not put a user account into an su-enabled group by default, and you could have placed that user in the proper group before going a few steps further then getting all pissy about it.
Just remember kids, nobody's forcing you to use one OS or the other, and that's the damn point.
Eh. Who cares?
Quite simply, as long as the OpenBSD project stays true to its goals of a proactively secure open-source OS, I don't care if Theo eats children for breakfast and breaks the legs of people in nursing homes for fun. As long as it doesn't affect the code, I'm all for it.
Umm...why the hell would Mattel release any version of the program, closed-source or not? The whole reason they're fighting this thing is to keep it away from the public. They don't want the rights so they can turn around and release it themselves. What would be the point in Mattel giving out the tool that shows the problems with their product?
When you tell a potential client that the certifications are "largely marketing ploys", I can tell you right now that warning bells are going to go off in their heads, cause it sure as hell is going to sound to them like you're trying to downplay your lack of certifications. I know it's mostly marketing, you know it too, but the CLIENT does not. Why should the client believe you? As far as the examples of previous work, I brought up that point as well.
As to the building analogy...the problem is that there are no professional standards yet for the tech industry. So, the client looks for the next best thing: vendor certifications.
The central problem is that most clients you or I or anyone else in the tech industry will deal with for at least a few more years do not take into account how new this industry is. They want to be assured of that which is not really assurable yet. Throw in the thousands of crackpot tech companies out there that truly do not have a clue, and the horror stories they generate, and a client feels that he must look for some sort of official statement of qualification.
Once again, I'm not saying certifications are a good thing. The industry is just too young for potential clients to just cross their fingers and hope they don't get fired if you fuck up.
Knowledgeable customers are few and far between. After all, isn't that why they're hiring you or your company to do the job for them? I'm not trying to say that certifications are inherently good or bad, but certifications do have a perceived value to the customer. You don't fund the construction of a building without making sure the contractors are licensed and bonded. For the vast majority of people who make the decisions of who to hire to build their network, they understand as little about networking as they do about construction. They need something to look at that says "these guys are not complete morons." About the only thing that tends to offset the need for certifications in my experience is letting potential customers talk to previous customers where similar work was done.
It's not gross, it's a far better way of handling the situation. In the times before civilization, most humans used every bit of an animal that they could. Eat the meat, and make things out of the rest. Clothes out of the hide, tools out of the bone, etc. Then we became "civilized." It became cheaper for us to just take the meat and dispose of the rest unused.
Now we get to revert a little bit. We'll actually be using more of the animal than we would otherwise. Grill me up some of those Genetically Altered Hot Dogs!
That's the dillema that marketing types face...you can never appeal to everyone all the time.
I told ya...it's alliteration. If you managed to avoid literature classes growing up (lucky bastard!), it's the intentional reuse of consonant sounds. They wanted names that would tie the company and the product together in the minds of the consumer. Say each of these 10 times:
"Matrox G400"
"Matrox Millenium G400"
Sure, the first would be just as good a functional identifier for the product. But the second "flows" better. It sounds more pleasing to the ear. This, subconciously, causes the consumer to think of smooth-flowing graphics performance. We also see a hint of corporate philosophy here; Matrox has traditionally been the card for high-end graphics users, not the hardcore gamer. All the other major players in the 3D card industry use terms symbolizing power, speed, explosive nature, etc...Matrox counters that with a name that seems to say "when you're ready to grow up, come to us."
Good god I'm starting to sound like a marketing guy. Please shoot me.
It's a marketing thing. Having a central theme for a product line generates greater brand recognition. Personally I kind of like these telltale signs in the names of products. It increases the likelihood that one of my family members will say one of the key words ("Blaster", "Viper", etc) and get me one step closer to remotely diagnosing their system for them. Don't you just love relatives with computers?
The histories of some of the themes are fun to think about. Creative uses blaster because...well, they always have. ATI uses "angry" words because they're pissed they can't make a competitive graphics board anymore. Matrox is going for the alliteration angle. 3Dfx wants you to think it's all voodoo magic. And STB (pre-merger days, at least) just picks random speed-related words (velocity, nitro, etc), throws in "3D" or a random big number (and maybe even the wor "PRO!"), and crosses their fingers and hopes that you'll think it really is good hardware!
Have you ever actually played with an N64 controller? If your hand is anything at all larger than "normal", even by just a small amount, you will have severe cramping after a while just from holding the damn thing. I can't stand to play any N64 game for more than a half hour or so thanks to the controller design. And this is coming from the kid who came home from some oral surgery, plugged up the 2600, and played Defender for literally 8 hours straight, handing the controller off to my sister once so I could go to the bathroom.
Actually, there were some 16k games as well. Plus, if you had the Supercharger addon, you could run games that were 32k...maybe 64k too, but i'm not entirely sure.
Yeah, that's one thing that sucks about the TI...that TV adaptor is evil. Those flimsy U-connectors always broke off, and you could only strip the wire down for so long.
If you're interested in getting your TI back into working order, you can do it pretty easily. I frequently find TI tv adapters at flea markets and thrift stores, and usually really cheap since they have no idea what the hell it is. Heck once I bought a system (computer+power supply+tv adapter+2 or 3 carts) for $1. Also, if you want to avoid the flea markets, there are a number of people who buy and sell classic video game and computer systems...just search for it...it has a large presence on ebay as well. You'll pay more that way, but not a lot more usually.
Speaking of 8-track shells, I've actually found cartridges for the Fairchild Channel F game system in thrift store 8 track bins...on more than one occasion.
Yep...if you held down fire, your ship would start to overheat. If you ignored the warnings and kept firing, you would explode.
Parsec was also a 2D side-scrolling space shooter game for the TI-99/4A home computer...a computer that holds a special place in my heart as it was the first I ever owned. Nothing spectacular in the graphics department, but insanely fun and addicting. And, if you had the speech synthesizer attatched to the TI, it even talked to you: "ENEMY SHIPS APPROACHING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!"
Hell yes....every day before I left for elementary school I'd manage to get a good 15 minutes of TI-99/4A Parsec in.
Hmm...there's a TI-99/4A in my closet...and a Parsec cart...I'll be back in a few days.
There's so many dirty glasses, plates, bottles, and other assorted trash around my (non-covered) box that there's gotta be all sorts of microbes growing inside my box...and given the fast evolutionary cycle of microorganisms, I'm sure there's at least a few that have learned to integrate with my machine. At least it gives me something to blame wierd shit on.
Why not buy a small, fast laptop? Well, price first of all...while you can get low to mid range laptops pretty cheap nowadays, the sort of laptop I'd want as a desktop replacement will still fall in the $3000-$4000 range.
The main thing for me about laptops has always been the fact that if something blows up, I can't just run down to the local computer shop and pick up a replacement part. I have the same issue with integrated-in-the-mobo stuff...if my motherboard's built-in sound blows, I don't want to have to buy another motherboard; I want to buy another sound card and be done with it. I own a p166 laptop, and I'm extremely careful with it because I don't want to have to send it off to "my nearest authorized Fujitsu repair center" to get it fixed.
Hardware modularity is good. Integration is bad.
True, but it's a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't scenario. If they had chosen 50 sites on a truly random basis, then proponents of censorware would say that the choices were not in fact random, but chosen specifically to try to undermine the reputation of the software. It's lame, yes, but choosing anything other than an arbitrary range (not a random selection) would just give the opposition something to spin.
Call it elitism if you like, whatever floats your boat. Apparently you've never worked support for any length of time...I have no problem saying that I prefer an OS that doesn't cater to the general user. Can't stand all that user friendly bullshit. I don't care how trimmed down you make it, it still uses up more resources for something I don't need/want. Take your graphical installs and shove them up your ass. I only run X when I actually need something graphical. This isn't like most cases of elitism, where it is infinitely hard for the lesser class to become part of the preferred class...they can go and learn the shit themselves and move beyond their little protected world.
My hardware is not 10 years old, in fact most of it is less than a year old (except the little p120 that serves as my gateway/firewall box). All quite well supported, too.
That spotlighting that Linux and BeOS are enjoying now wasn't there until quite recently.
Besides, those of us in the BSD camp will continue to love our OS's just the same. A piece of the spotlight would be nice, but the BSD community will continue to exist regardless. In the meantime, the Linux emulation gets better and better...so when some company makes it for Linux, we can run it too.
On a side note, you seem to be the type that wants Linux to win on all fronts, including the desktop. I say screw the desktop market. I don't want the demands of the populace at large causing the REAL decline of my OS of choice.
Well, the users at this site also have email service through my company, and aren't (supposed) to be using their computers for anything other than business purposes...besides, if it's their personal AOL email they want, they can check that through AOL's website.