Ther're things that help us live. Ther're things that make life worth living.
There's an empty spot where a point needs to be made. Somebody make the point, even if that's not the point that somebody would rather be making.
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." --Thoreau's Walden Pond Breaking out of that rut requires countless... such as yours. Waiting for "good" takes too long.
Hmmpf, all I got was an Unsafe ActiveX control. Let me know when Microsoft actually gets serious about security.
Now seriously. I am cavalier about security. I run as root (same login Linux or domain admin). I leave my computers up and running and logged in. My security is rotten and it's better than Microsoft's?
They're the ones who have all their little tweaks set up, and the ones who cause all the problems helpdesks lose their reputations trying to fix.;-) Particularly when their tweaks don't work the way the IT magazine articles said they would.
Having a locked down system like Linux can offer is probably the best thing for everyone, if it only keeps these types out.
Hmmm, methinks the advantage with Linux is more like: Let 'em do what they like. If they screw up their desktop, rm -rf Desktop Let 'em log off and back on, and they're back to the default.
Come on, guys, if we are to bring on the Linux desktop, we need to dispell the myth that it [Linux] is hard to use.
Not entirely myth.
You are entirely correct in that much of what normal users need and want to do is in fact quite easy with Linux, often easier than with Microsoft.
The thing is that the optimum level of use with Linux is substantially higher than that of Microsoft, like comparing vi with pico. Linux is harder in that it's worthwhile learning to do stuff that isn't worthwhile learning with Microsoft.
With Microsoft Word I tell my users to just slop something in. It will come out looking halfway presentable. Do not, ever, care much about how it looks. If you care about what it looks like you are fighting something bigger than you are and it will have its own way. With Linux and Open/Star Office I would expect better, meaning that there's stuff that's worth learning.
Which means that ultimately you must depend on the honor and reputation of the company.
Which is why I'd choose Google over Microsoft regardless of whatever is or isn't in any Privacy Statement. Google might sell me out, but I don't think they'd do it cheaply.
Yes, the distro is unimportant. In the same way that the weakest link in a chain is the most important.
Any hardware will do and any service provider too. At two or three nines. IBM has the resources to handle the situation if, no strike that, when something goes wrong.
To paraphrase, "Is it IBM or NOT EXACTLY".
Re:Iron oxide, cellulose acetate, and aluminum pow
on
Zeppelin Flies Again
·
· Score: 1
Kind of hard to believe that German engineers in the 1930s would be quite that stupid, isn't it?
When engineers (do it right) come up against marketing (make it look nice), who wins? Even German engineers.
It's neither a bug, nor is a feature. It's a difference, and possibly a testing methodology flaw.
Seems like benchmarks always have problems. Even using them for diagnostic purposes, they are capable of outright lying. Apples and oranges is probably closer than most benchmarks manage. If you have an agenda it's almost trivial to rig benchmarks to fit that agenda.
Which is faster, a well-tuned Ferarri or an old water buffalo? Put 'em in a rice paddy and find out. (If it's a very long distance, wait for the rice paddy to dry out and still be faster;)
Which is faster at moving sand, a wheelbarrow or an 85-ton truck? How much sand?
Strategies for memory allocation: Fixed preallocated memory. Never leaks and never runs out. Allocate as needed. All freed at the end. Allocate as needed. Garbage collect as needed. Allocate as needed. Explicit freed when not needed.
Depending on circumstances, any of the above could seriously dominate all the others.
I would like to add that this also does a disservice to the memory of the creators of the works. Copyright seems to be working to insure the anihilation of their memory. An extreme comparison, but imagine taking the graveyards of your ancestors, destroying the headstones, and putting up some parking lots. I don't particularly care about gravestones and ancestors, but that seems somehow very wrong.
Offline working can be surprisingly productive, and as it often forces more thinking and planning
From punched cards and two shots a day to fully interactive. It's better, I think, but not really a LOT better. With limited access, you fix problems in parallel and use the "idle" time to check some things pretty thoroughly. Interactive is good for solving superficial problems quickly and sequentially.
Offtopic, but why does google engender a warm fuzzy feeling of trust whereas yahoo, hotmail and the rest "feel" like corporates out to make a quick buck? It's a totally false feeling, but it's happens...
Maybe because Google is not out to make a quick buck. There's money in the technology but it requires Google to remain reputable. Somehow Google gives me the warm fuzzies and I think it's more that I can trust them not to sell my information cheaply. Any reasonable company considers their customers' information as an extremely valuable asset. Most any company could make a few bucks by selling their customer list, but would be very stupid to do so.
The problem is that many computer users want "easy" solutions to difficult problems. They would rather take an easy road that claims to work rather than one that actually solves the problem.
Question: Do you have backups?
The answer will be "yes" unless nobody even thought of doing backups.
OpenBSD: Uber secure? I'll grant them that. Secure? Probably not. But they're working on it.
And then there are people like me who are on Slashdot primarily as an advanced early warning system for Microsoft Windows malware. Some good old-fashioned Microsoft bashing doesn't hurt either.
Hehe. You have to realise that it's not a level playing field.
In proprietary land, a vendor would first sue the person who released the information. Then, the re-iteration that you won't be vulnerable if you use a "properly configured firewall," then they'd start working on a fix. What else can they do? They have to at least pretend they're on top of it. Basically, they're allowed one shot and they're shooting in the dark.
There are patches that "work", even before a full explanation is available. Now, thousands of people are actively working on a solution, if they so choose. If they don't choose, they can... Comes off like the Keystone Kops, BUT. Third stringers try stuff. Some of it might even work. Second stringers try stuff, but with some battlefield intelligence. First stringers eventually get it right. Users join the fray at the level that fits their own priorities.
From the attacker's viewpoint. Attack against Microsoft's best and brightest, and win for awhile at least. Attack against Open Source and some dumb idiot will stumble into the cure. Being beaten by an idiot in a game of wits cannot be enhancing the ego.
Looks a bit bad with an OS-maker not using it's own OS for it's website.
Rubbish. Assuming security is actually a priority, there are some good reasons to run the web and ftp servers on something different. One or the other might have problems occasionally, but the odds of both having problems at the same time is (considerably) less than the odds of either one of them having problems.
(Of course is may just be the storage and bandwidth available from the University of Alberta;)
I don't understand the constant comparison between computers and real world objects.
You can explain the unknown is terms of the known. Explaining the unknown in terms of the unknown is best left to the foundations of mathematics.
You can do more with a computer than the real world, i.e. nest drawers. True, and with a decent filesystem, the exact same thing can be in several different drawers simultaneously. You can also move a lot of stuff around just by switching labels.
The problem with these comparisons, as with stereotypes in general, is that just because you have some of the picture, you do not in general have all of the picture. Computers model some of reality. The real world returns the favor and models some of the computer. Drawings conclusions is a bit dangerous, certainly regarding the limits of one having any relation to the limits of the other.
"Think of your hard drive contents as of a desk full of drawers. Every time you put something into a drawer, you may be sure that the next time you open the same drawer it will be in the same place (and the drawer itself will remain in the same place). So, when you open a folder and try to locate a particular icon, it should be where you put it before. Simple?"
This is good if I've only got a few things in a few drawers and I'm the only one messing with them and if I half-way remember where I put everything. Problem is I've got too much stuff and even if it's just me, I do manage to wear more than one hat and each hat will rearrange stuff to the detriment of the other hats. Sounds nice, but it's really only viable in the cases where the volume of stuff is sufficiently small that the organization, or lack thereof, doesn't really matter.
their motives seem to be less than friendly towards the other distros...
Of course they're biased. I'd get real suspicious if anything like a shootout list looked friendly toward their competition.
Any distro will have its own set of priorities and biases and will attempt to optimize its own distribution according to that set of priorities and biases. This makes for a mind-set and they will view everything according to that mind-set.
Slap a cheaper-brand label on the same hardware and sell it at a reduced price.
Slightly OT. I miss the boxed RedHat Professional Server. Nice box, although they got smaller and thinner after 6.2. Never mind that I only used what was on the first few CDs. Never mind that I could just about as easily downloaded what I was using for free. I can't really blame RedHat. Those boxes were profitable but not lucrative. RedHat's main asset is its name, and they aren't selling it so cheaply anymore. CheapBytes may well have the same bits and bytes, but it doesn't have the same name.
Looks like lindows is having hard time selling their *own* product... I wouldn't read it that way. Selling your competitors' product, at a steep discount no less, shows a lot of guts (which will be remembered) and is one way of creating "excitement". It also helps shift the question from "Whether Linux" to "Which Linux". This is a strategy you can only get from a savvy principal, never from a hired-hand consultant.
Note the DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL ADDRESS. The fax address could also be faked. At 20 million addresses, that makes my eyeballs worth.005 cents. I am insulted!
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The problem with software of this nature, or any "black-box-off-the-shelf" core business software is that it always comes with its own agenda regarding what the core processes of the business should be. [Emphasis Added]
In the case of ERP software, that agenda sets what the core processes of the business will be.
In order to find out what you need the software to do, you need to get the users together and find out from them what they do. Hard work, yes. Buying software is not a viable alternative. All you can buy is a solution to somebody else's problems. The hard work is necessary regardless. Otherwise you take Nieman-Marcus grade and turn it into Wal-Mart grade. And that's if you're lucky. (referring to merchandise calibre, not to management calibre)
Slashdot Mirror
Ther're things that help us live.
... such as yours. Waiting for "good" takes too long.
Ther're things that make life worth living.
There's an empty spot where a point needs to be made.
Somebody make the point, even if that's not the point that somebody would rather be making.
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." --Thoreau's Walden Pond
Breaking out of that rut requires countless
Hmmpf, all I got was an Unsafe ActiveX control.
Let me know when Microsoft actually gets serious about security.
Now seriously. I am cavalier about security. I run as root (same login Linux or domain admin). I leave my computers up and running and logged in.
My security is rotten and it's better than Microsoft's?
They're the ones who have all their little tweaks set up, and the ones who cause all the problems helpdesks lose their reputations trying to fix. ;-) Particularly when their tweaks don't work the way the IT magazine articles said they would.
Having a locked down system like Linux can offer is probably the best thing for everyone, if it only keeps these types out.
Hmmm, methinks the advantage with Linux is more like:
Let 'em do what they like. If they screw up their desktop,
rm -rf Desktop
Let 'em log off and back on, and they're back to the default.
Good one.
"Enjoy your SPAM" indeed.
What's missing from that is for how much they sold the private information.
I'm guessing that it's cheap enough to be positively insulting.
Come on, guys, if we are to bring on the Linux desktop, we need to dispell the myth that it [Linux] is hard to use.
Not entirely myth.
You are entirely correct in that much of what normal users need and want to do is in fact quite easy with Linux, often easier than with Microsoft.
The thing is that the optimum level of use with Linux is substantially higher than that of Microsoft, like comparing vi with pico. Linux is harder in that it's worthwhile learning to do stuff that isn't worthwhile learning with Microsoft.
With Microsoft Word I tell my users to just slop something in. It will come out looking halfway presentable. Do not, ever, care much about how it looks. If you care about what it looks like you are fighting something bigger than you are and it will have its own way.
With Linux and Open/Star Office I would expect better, meaning that there's stuff that's worth learning.
Which means that ultimately you must depend on the honor and reputation of the company.
Which is why I'd choose Google over Microsoft regardless of whatever is or isn't in any Privacy Statement. Google might sell me out, but I don't think they'd do it cheaply.
Yes, the distro is unimportant.
In the same way that the weakest link in a chain is the most important.
Any hardware will do and any service provider too.
At two or three nines. IBM has the resources to handle the situation if, no strike that, when something goes wrong.
To paraphrase, "Is it IBM or NOT EXACTLY".
Kind of hard to believe that German engineers in the 1930s would be quite that stupid, isn't it?
When engineers (do it right) come up against marketing (make it look nice), who wins? Even German engineers.
It's neither a bug, nor is a feature. It's a difference, and possibly a testing methodology flaw.
Seems like benchmarks always have problems. Even using them for diagnostic purposes, they are capable of outright lying. Apples and oranges is probably closer than most benchmarks manage. If you have an agenda it's almost trivial to rig benchmarks to fit that agenda.
Which is faster, a well-tuned Ferarri or an old water buffalo?
Put 'em in a rice paddy and find out.
(If it's a very long distance, wait for the rice paddy to dry out and still be faster;)
Which is faster at moving sand, a wheelbarrow or an 85-ton truck?
How much sand?
Strategies for memory allocation:
Fixed preallocated memory. Never leaks and never runs out.
Allocate as needed. All freed at the end.
Allocate as needed. Garbage collect as needed.
Allocate as needed. Explicit freed when not needed.
Depending on circumstances, any of the above could seriously dominate all the others.
Well said.
I would like to add that this also does a disservice to the memory of the creators of the works. Copyright seems to be working to insure the anihilation of their memory.
An extreme comparison, but imagine taking the graveyards of your ancestors, destroying the headstones, and putting up some parking lots. I don't particularly care about gravestones and ancestors, but that seems somehow very wrong.
How many OS kernels are going to be written in the next ten years? And how many business applications?
How many written once and used once?
Seems the question should be how many used, and how often used.
Offline working can be surprisingly productive, and as it often forces more thinking and planning
From punched cards and two shots a day to fully interactive. It's better, I think, but not really a LOT better. With limited access, you fix problems in parallel and use the "idle" time to check some things pretty thoroughly. Interactive is good for solving superficial problems quickly and sequentially.
Offtopic, but why does google engender a warm fuzzy feeling of trust whereas yahoo, hotmail and the rest "feel" like corporates out to make a quick buck? It's a totally false feeling, but it's happens...
Maybe because Google is not out to make a quick buck.
There's money in the technology but it requires Google to remain reputable.
Somehow Google gives me the warm fuzzies and I think it's more that I can trust them not to sell my information cheaply. Any reasonable company considers their customers' information as an extremely valuable asset. Most any company could make a few bucks by selling their customer list, but would be very stupid to do so.
The problem is that many computer users want "easy" solutions to difficult problems. They would rather take an easy road that claims to work rather than one that actually solves the problem.
Question: Do you have backups?
The answer will be "yes" unless nobody even thought of doing backups.
OpenBSD:
Uber secure? I'll grant them that.
Secure? Probably not. But they're working on it.
it is not some moral requirement to use Linux
And then there are people like me who are on Slashdot primarily as an advanced early warning system for Microsoft Windows malware. Some good old-fashioned Microsoft bashing doesn't hurt either.
I love how "properly configured firewall" is the solution to everything.
And always with no clue as to what means "properly configured firewall".
General strategy. Any problem is always the fault of something else. Find something, anything, to push the blame elsewhere.
Hehe. You have to realise that it's not a level playing field.
...
In proprietary land, a vendor would first sue the person who released the information. Then, the re-iteration that you won't be vulnerable if you use a "properly configured firewall," then they'd start working on a fix.
What else can they do? They have to at least pretend they're on top of it. Basically, they're allowed one shot and they're shooting in the dark.
There are patches that "work", even before a full explanation is available. Now, thousands of people are actively working on a solution, if they so choose. If they don't choose, they can
Comes off like the Keystone Kops, BUT.
Third stringers try stuff. Some of it might even work.
Second stringers try stuff, but with some battlefield intelligence.
First stringers eventually get it right.
Users join the fray at the level that fits their own priorities.
From the attacker's viewpoint.
Attack against Microsoft's best and brightest, and win for awhile at least.
Attack against Open Source and some dumb idiot will stumble into the cure.
Being beaten by an idiot in a game of wits cannot be enhancing the ego.
Looks a bit bad with an OS-maker not using it's own OS for it's website.
Rubbish.
Assuming security is actually a priority, there are some good reasons to run the web and ftp servers on something different. One or the other might have problems occasionally, but the odds of both having problems at the same time is (considerably) less than the odds of either one of them having problems.
(Of course is may just be the storage and bandwidth available from the University of Alberta;)
We've had this COM environment for 10 years with Windows. In my opinion it's more powerful than the "everything's a pipe" approach.
Pardon a stupid question, but is that why Windows get the worms and viruses and Linux does not?
I don't understand the constant comparison between computers and real world objects.
You can explain the unknown is terms of the known. Explaining the unknown in terms of the unknown is best left to the foundations of mathematics.
You can do more with a computer than the real world, i.e. nest drawers.
True, and with a decent filesystem, the exact same thing can be in several different drawers simultaneously. You can also move a lot of stuff around just by switching labels.
The problem with these comparisons, as with stereotypes in general, is that just because you have some of the picture, you do not in general have all of the picture. Computers model some of reality. The real world returns the favor and models some of the computer. Drawings conclusions is a bit dangerous, certainly regarding the limits of one having any relation to the limits of the other.
"Think of your hard drive contents as of a desk full of drawers. Every time you put something into a drawer, you may be sure that the next time you open the same drawer it will be in the same place (and the drawer itself will remain in the same place). So, when you open a folder and try to locate a particular icon, it should be where you put it before. Simple?"
This is good if I've only got a few things in a few drawers and I'm the only one messing with them and if I half-way remember where I put everything.
Problem is I've got too much stuff and even if it's just me, I do manage to wear more than one hat and each hat will rearrange stuff to the detriment of the other hats. Sounds nice, but it's really only viable in the cases where the volume of stuff is sufficiently small that the organization, or lack thereof, doesn't really matter.
their motives seem to be less than friendly towards the other distros...
Of course they're biased. I'd get real suspicious if anything like a shootout list looked friendly toward their competition.
Any distro will have its own set of priorities and biases and will attempt to optimize its own distribution according to that set of priorities and biases. This makes for a mind-set and they will view everything according to that mind-set.
Slap a cheaper-brand label on the same hardware and sell it at a reduced price.
...
Slightly OT. I miss the boxed RedHat Professional Server. Nice box, although they got smaller and thinner after 6.2. Never mind that I only used what was on the first few CDs. Never mind that I could just about as easily downloaded what I was using for free. I can't really blame RedHat. Those boxes were profitable but not lucrative. RedHat's main asset is its name, and they aren't selling it so cheaply anymore. CheapBytes may well have the same bits and bytes, but it doesn't have the same name.
Looks like lindows is having hard time selling their *own* product
I wouldn't read it that way. Selling your competitors' product, at a steep discount no less, shows a lot of guts (which will be remembered) and is one way of creating "excitement". It also helps shift the question from "Whether Linux" to "Which Linux". This is a strategy you can only get from a savvy principal, never from a hired-hand consultant.
Note the DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL ADDRESS. .005 cents.
The fax address could also be faked.
At 20 million addresses, that makes my eyeballs worth
I am insulted!
(some stuff deleted to avoid lameness filter)
EMAIL BLAST CAMPAIGNS
ARE YOU TOO BUSY TO SEND OUT YOUR EMAILS YOURSELF?
WHY NOT LET US DO IT FOR YOU?
HOW MANY WOULD YOU LIKE US TO BROADCAST FOR YOU?
PLEASE CHOOSE FORM THE FOLLOWING:
[ ] 5 Million ADDRESSES $400.00
[ ] 10 Million ADDRESSES $600.00
[ ] 20 Million ADDRESSES $1,000.00
[ ] 30 Million ADDRESSES $1,500.00
We use our own directory, so you do not need to pay one dime extra.
"69 percent of U.S. e-mail users have made purchases online, 59 percent have
Purchased in retail stores, 39 percent have purchased through catalogs,
34 percent through call centers and 20 percent through postal mail."
E-mail broadcasting is the simplest, fastest, and most effective way to
Communicate. Reach media messages, which invite recipients to respond live.
SEE HERE FOR DETAILS ON OUR CURRENT PROMOTIONS
No Software to Buy - Nothing to download
Lowest cost for broadcast - Guarantee!
E-Mail is a key component in maintaining contact with your customers!
Email Broadcasting
==DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL ADDRESS==
ONLY COMMUNICATE WITH US BY FAX
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Subject: ARE YOU TOO BUSY TO SEND OUT YOUR EMAILS YOURSELF?
Date: Sat, 12 Jun 2004 08:02:23 -0400
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The problem with software of this nature, or any "black-box-off-the-shelf" core business software is that it always comes with its own agenda regarding what the core processes of the business should be. [Emphasis Added]
In the case of ERP software, that agenda sets what the core processes of the business will be.
In order to find out what you need the software to do, you need to get the users together and find out from them what they do.
Hard work, yes. Buying software is not a viable alternative. All you can buy is a solution to somebody else's problems. The hard work is necessary regardless. Otherwise you take Nieman-Marcus grade and turn it into Wal-Mart grade. And that's if you're lucky. (referring to merchandise calibre, not to management calibre)