... that is, they're talking about the SMB protocol messenging service - not MSN.
IMHO the right answer is to block ports 137, 138, 139 and 445 to cut this, and all the other SMB crap, off entirely. If you need SMB service - use IPSec and tunnel it like you should be anyway. IMHO having SMB exposed to the internet is madness.
Because criminal statutes are drafted very carefully and interpreted narrowly.
I'm afraid there might be a missing "should be" in there... possibly where that "are" is. Too many laws are now drafted broadly, and you no longer know when you're committing a crime. Good examples include the US's DMCA and the drop-jaw PATRIOT act.
... but it's not so much the ISPs ( I regularly deal with several - home DSL, work DSL, backup work service ) as a few good individual techs at the ISPs.
All ISPs I work with here have a sort of linux-neutral policy. Unfofficially, it comes down to "our customers want it, and because we don't have the knowledge we can't thoroughly support it, but if you're using it you should know what you're doing anyway." They'll talk to you, help diagnose issues, but if it's your end it's your problem. Reasonable as far as I'm concerned, especially since in reality they're usually more helpful than that once you find someone who knows what they're doing. My first ADSL setup was bridged, and I was walked (as a bit of a newbie at the time, 'twas years ago) through configuring a debian box for the bridged DSL service.
Basically, I remember people I've had good experiences dealing with, and tend to try to find them again - less pain for me, and hopefully one less brain-melting customer for them.
You know, in some ways it's better to say "can't be done" or at least "you can try, but it's your problem" than the all-too-common "sure, sure, that'll work FINE, just buy the damnn thing".
I've had that experience more than a few times, and personally I'll take "can't be done" anytime. It's irritating, but nothing like as bad - especially when it's an ISP with a large monthly fee who doesn't actually care if you're getting service or not, you still have to pay.
I've had ISP tech support people develop that confused tone when I mentioned I was using Debian Linux... so I just said "it's Red Hat" and you could almost hear the light come on over the phone. It doesn't happen so much now, though.
Recently, I've had the pleasant experience of ISP techs asking what OS I was using, and when I responded with "the firewall/router is Debian, my desktop is Red Hat" they've (a) been pleased they're dealing with a user who knows what an OS is and (b) gone "aah.... good. OK, in/var/log/syslog..."
It's always nice to see that even in a job as bad as ISP tech support, some people are interested and know more than they absolutely have to. I tend to ask for particular techs now (the sort who when I say "my DSL modem just lost sync" don't respond with "OK, now click start->..."). Less frustration for me and them;-)
This is especially critical given that Verisign's business is supposedly trust. They sell SSL certificates, and the only way they can claim they're better to use for them than (say) I am, is that they have an established record of security procedures and trust.
if it wasn't such an incredibly bad pic. Look at the colour in that thing - it's awful. Personally, if somebody tried to sell me a clipart image gallery with samples like that in it, I'd be rather offended.
That, or the web designers involved in using that pic hire the photoshop work out to lobotomized monkeys.
That wonderful firmware update isn't unusual for them, either. When I bought it, my 8500-8 SATA RAID card (*drool*) didn't support hot addition and removal of entire arrays. One firmware update just quietly mentioned in the release notes that they'd implemented hot addition and removal of RAID arrays. Wow.
My first 3ware card was a horrible dud, and actually caused me a lot of grief. My local dealer was really bad, and as I'm in Australia 3ware wasn't able to help me directly. Oh, and their web support was/really crap/. Anyway, once I got the card replaced and found someone at 3ware who had a BRAIN ( and was absolutely brilliantly helpful actually) everything was peachy. I'm very happy overall, though I wish they had better web support and card quality control.
I'd be giving it about an 80% chance of saying 'no! that's a bad word!' when presented with "sex". Yay. Pass the silly cultural hangups on to the next generation, and confuse 'em good and proper as well.
Cool:-) Does that also work under OS9? I know there's some utility to help out under OSX, but due to software compatability we're stuck with OS9 for some time to come.
I love the puck use... that's just brilliant. Kind of like having heated mice (in Western Australia, it's rather hot, with 35 - 40 degree summer days).
Either way, your problems sound suspicious to me. I wouldn't say you're trolling, but there's something wrong here.
There is, indeed - we're still trying to find it.
Moving to Windows and InDesign isn't going to make your life easier. You will have to deal with printer not taking InDesign files
I now agree - you definitely are an old-timer in the industry. I don't know of a single printer in our city (Perth) that doesn't accept PDF files, and most now don't accept anything else. It wouldn't matter if we printed using Pagemaker (well, it wouldn't matter to our printers, anyway).
Once again, if your OS is crashing like that, you have IT problems. That's true no whether you're using OS 9, Winders or Linux.
I can't entirely agree there. If there are regular, persistant reliability issues then yes something is definitely wrong beyond the OS. However, part of an OS's job is to deal with the user trying to run things that are misbehaving, not just crash as well. And a facility for obtaining diagnostic information is important for the quick resolution of issues, no matter what the cause, as it reduces the amount of guesswork or trial-and-error involved in troubleshooting a problem.
If you are not seeing this, then there's something very, very wrong. I am beginning to think this is a case of PEBKAC.
Perhaps, but in that case several DTP support specialists and apple dealers in the city are also incompetent. Do you really think that I'd be talking about these issues this way if I hadn't had people in to look at them? NOBODY WE'VE FOUND CAN FIX THIS. And trust me, we've tried. It costs us in wasted user and admin time to have unstable workstations, and we've done what we can to fix the issue. Insulting me does not help make your point.
As for the fonts - that's a real pickle. They were bought from a relatively small foundry that is no longer in business. We are unable to find the original disks - IT was a total mess when I took over, and lots of things have just never been located. And yes, we did buy the fonts - *sigh*. We're looking at just buying some similar typefaces as replacements, but the boss is dragging his heels due to the pretty shocking prices. I suspect that a new, clean font set would fix about 70% of our problems with our DTP setup, and would love to do it. Most of the crashes, for sure, are font related.
As for a move to Windows + InDesign - it/has/ made our lives easier. The cost is much lower, the system performance is a big improvement - sufficiently so to matter - and it's dramatically more stable. Of course, the font set is different, and as the font set may be the core of our stability issues I can't make any clear judgements from the test as it stands. We're unable to use the machine in our main page layout tasks, only for ad layout, due to typeface availablility and document compatability. We'll have to re-evaluate if we ever get the macs fixed and get a full font set for BOTH platforms, of course.
In the end, though, the workstation cost makes it worth considering if nothing else. Quark costs more than/twice/ what it does in the US (ie AU$3500 vs AU$1450 in the US) and we get InDesign essentially for free with the other Adobe software we need anyway. We can't just buy Quark from the US because Quark refuse to support the US version in Australia. That price difference, the lower platform cost and the better integration into our existing network, makes a Windows + InDesign setup attractive. I don't look forward to virus protection and security issues, but in the end I think it'll work out better.
I also don't understand what you mean by "our single (cheap) pilot machine". Does that mean you have one machine which is doing DTP?
No. 7 machines, plus a test machine running InDesign on Win2k that's being used to set ads.
I'd be suspecting that we were just doing something wrong/stupid myself, if it werent for the fact that (a) we
Yeah, I know the puck is gone (thank god). I buy enough macs to know what Apple's latest and greatest has, alas - I work for a newspaper and our publishing is done on Macs at the moment.
That said, they've replaced the puck with other retarded measures, including the "no reset button" G4 (because after all, MacOS X is/so/ stable that you don't evern need to hard-reset, right - so why would we give you the option? And if you're running OS9, that's your problem eh...).
Another doozy is the recent G4s with no eject button on the CD-ROM - great if you like an Apple keyboard with eject key, infuriating if you happen to need another kind of keyboard on your mac, and it doesn't have an eject key. Why, exactly, should they deliberately make it impossible to eject the CD-ROM manually WHEN EMPTY?
I know why it locks the tray when full (it's the only sane thing to do, look how windows handles it - eject CD unexpectedly, bluescreen!) but making it almost impossible to get to the CD-ROM's eject button strikes me as totally retarded.
The removal of the 3 1/2" bay is a PITA too. We happen to/need/ our zip drives, and don't like USB 1.1 speeds (and of course the G4s dont have USB 2, except maybe the very latest - not sure there).
Yes, it's a rant. What really gets me is that I/KNOW/ apple can make good hardware - just look at the recent iBooks and other laptops - but they seem to be determined to shoot themselves in the foot on the desktop, using high pricing and retarded/quirky design.
And, like you, I don't really like the/new/ mice either. They're not bad, but we've still replaced all of them with those MS Wheel Mouse Optical mice so that we have 3 buttons for use in Quark. I also find it vaguely disturbing having to "click the mouse."
BTW, I still have a small collection of pucks, and will be keeping them until I can throw them off a/really/ tall building, and see how many times they bounce.
Hmm.... well, we are saddled with an unfortunate mess called Suitcase for our font management - I suspect that to be part of the issue we're having. A few possibly dodgy fonts don't help, either.
The fact is, though, that there's just no excuse for the OS crashing like that for any reason. At the very least, some debugging info and a vaguely useful error message would be nice.
Don't like the fonts? report an error and refuse to load them. App causes a problem? Kill it, and report an error to the user. etc.
Not "QuarkExpress caused an error of type 2" followed by a hard crash - 4 times a day.
Therein, really, lies the problem - sure macs might be stable when they're correctly tweaked and configured... but there's SFA information about/how/ they must be tweaked and configured. Most of the Apple dealers know almost nothing about it, including one in our city that/claims/ to be a DTP specialist. If the damnn things just provided some diagnostic information when things went wrong, it'd be possible to at least isolate the issues and fix them.
Or, of course, the OS could cope with anything going wrong/unexpected without dying. It's always done that - right from OS7. Sure, sometimes it recovers, but it's usually flakey until you reboot it anyway. A bit like win98 really:-(
Anyway, I suspect our issues stem from: (a) the fact that quark doesn't properly handle network file operations, and in fact Quark's only suggestion is "don't use it on a network" (*lol*) or get OSX... and the quark upgrade. (b) a few possibly dodgy/damaged fonts, but they're somewhat critical and we can't find replacements. (C) Suitcase, apparently the dodgiest font manager around. (d) The use of an NT4 file server.
It's easy to say, in theory, "well you suspect you know what's wrong, go and fix it" but in reality it just doesn't work out like that. All these things cost (quite a lot of) money to even test.
The fact is that we're moving to InDesign on Win2k simply because our single (cheap) pilot machine is about a thousand times as stable as the macs, one third the price, and about 3x as fast to boot.
I have a very hetrogenous network at work - MacOS 9, Win98, and LTSP boxes on the client end, NT4, Linux and Sco OpenServer on the server end. I find that the macs take up an unreasonable amount of support time, much of which is saying 'oh, just reset it, it's crashed again'.
The LTSP boxes need the next largest amount of support. It's a fairly new installation, and we're having more issues than we expected given initial testing. It's working well, but taking more time than I'd like - hopefully that'll change in time.
The Win98 boxes need the least amount of support and attention. They have no floppy drives or CD-ROMs and the USB ports are disabled, so it's hard for users to bring their own stuff in on disk/flash/whatever. They're asked to email it instead - forcing it through our virus scanner. I know, email isn't for that - but if you have no alternative, it works.
OTOH, MS Word (on the '98 machines) does appear to have a magical ability to rearrange toolbars whenever the user looks away from it, resulting in a fair bit of confusion and wasted time.
Eudora, on the 98 boxes, takes as much support as Mozilla on the LTSP machines. OTOH, mozilla is improving - Eudora is still the same old POS.
My point here - I suspect many IT folks don't use macs because past experience says that they're/very hard to manage/, unreliable, hard to back up or force users to store data on the network, and generally not suitable for large-scale business use. Hopefully Apple have improved this with OSX, but I still crashed it in 15 minutes (admittedly running Quark under Classic with a font manager).
If nothing else, too much power generation and use will cause major problems due to heat output. Our climate is quite senstive, and it's surprising how small changes need to be.
Everything they're talking about there can be done locally at an NNTP server, at least as I read it, and won't affect the wider usenet. So it's more user-interface work and work on a server with a different set of design goals to the current NNTP servers.
I'm all for it. You'll need a proxy server to protect the Exchange box running the MS-NNTP server from direct access by scary things like non-Lookout news readers of course. It sounds like an interesting idea though, and perhaps some of the better / more useful ideas might propagate to other NNTP software.
Wow... I'm impressed. Genuine political system reform - and just when it's most desparately needed.
That'll hopefully actually FIX the one massive, gaping problem with the American political system (at least as seen from outside of it). No more "Senator for auction, bidding starts at $5m". Except they never seem to be that expensive, that's the sad part.
Of course, Hollings will be out of a job, being "Mr Disney"... so sad:-P
I'm afraid that voters really don't seem to have much power, not anymore. Not when politicians have to take legal bribes to afford the advertising they need to get elected.
So if you don't have the money to get them elected, it does them little good to listen to you.
Depressing, but that's how it seems. At leasst from my perspective, not being a US resident and all.
In Australia, it often feels like we may as well be a US state in terms of how strongly US events affect our own laws and politics, but we don't get a vote in the events that largely determine our eventual laws. As if the politicians think we're another US state...
Gzip is all well and good, but as you point out only does half the job. Tar/could/ be used for archiving, but I'd prefer a format not designed around the concept of linear tape archives myself.
Perhaps something with indexing and the ability to be CLEANLY EXTENDED for more file attributes in the future (MIME type, etc) so that they could be ignored if not undersood?
This is what MIME is for. Rather than adding yet more incomprehensible 3-letter codes on the end of filenames, why don't we use slightly-less-incomprehensible MIME coding in the filesystem metadata?
More and more filesystems support it, as do some other apps. I seem to remember talk of internal MIME type tracking being possible in WinFS (the SQL-Server based MS filesystem for their newer OSes) and maybe even NTFS, as well as in Reiser4, Ext3, maybe reiser3, and no doubt others.
The file extension is the horrible legacy of the MS-DOS 8.3 filenames, and we'd be well rid of it. I'd expect a LONG transition period though (file ext commonly used, but MIME type understood, always used where supported, and considered authorative) - yuk.
Since a reboot if not a kernel relink seems to be needed to change IP address (SCO: More reboots than Win98!) I'm not sure what the use of a DHCP client on OpenServer would be.
As for SCOAdmin, yeah I wish there was something as comprehensive for Linux. Preferably minus the flakey TCL coding that sometimes 'remembers' settings - and never runs again.
The one thing I'll say about OpenServer - it was a big upgrade from Xenix.
Slashdot Mirror
... that is, they're talking about the SMB protocol messenging service - not MSN.
IMHO the right answer is to block ports 137, 138, 139 and 445 to cut this, and all the other SMB crap, off entirely. If you need SMB service - use IPSec and tunnel it like you should be anyway. IMHO having SMB exposed to the internet is madness.
Because criminal statutes are drafted very carefully and interpreted narrowly.
I'm afraid there might be a missing "should be" in there... possibly where that "are" is. Too many laws are now drafted broadly, and you no longer know when you're committing a crime. Good examples include the US's DMCA and the drop-jaw PATRIOT act.
If only Australia was much better...
... but it's not so much the ISPs ( I regularly deal with several - home DSL, work DSL, backup work service ) as a few good individual techs at the ISPs.
All ISPs I work with here have a sort of linux-neutral policy. Unfofficially, it comes down to "our customers want it, and because we don't have the knowledge we can't thoroughly support it, but if you're using it you should know what you're doing anyway." They'll talk to you, help diagnose issues, but if it's your end it's your problem. Reasonable as far as I'm concerned, especially since in reality they're usually more helpful than that once you find someone who knows what they're doing. My first ADSL setup was bridged, and I was walked (as a bit of a newbie at the time, 'twas years ago) through configuring a debian box for the bridged DSL service.
Basically, I remember people I've had good experiences dealing with, and tend to try to find them again - less pain for me, and hopefully one less brain-melting customer for them.
You know, in some ways it's better to say "can't be done" or at least "you can try, but it's your problem" than the all-too-common "sure, sure, that'll work FINE, just buy the damnn thing".
I've had that experience more than a few times, and personally I'll take "can't be done" anytime. It's irritating, but nothing like as bad - especially when it's an ISP with a large monthly fee who doesn't actually care if you're getting service or not, you still have to pay.
I've had ISP tech support people develop that confused tone when I mentioned I was using Debian Linux ... so I just said "it's Red Hat" and you could almost hear the light come on over the phone. It doesn't happen so much now, though.
/var/log/syslog..."
;-)
Recently, I've had the pleasant experience of ISP techs asking what OS I was using, and when I responded with "the firewall/router is Debian, my desktop is Red Hat" they've (a) been pleased they're dealing with a user who knows what an OS is and (b) gone "aah.... good. OK, in
It's always nice to see that even in a job as bad as ISP tech support, some people are interested and know more than they absolutely have to. I tend to ask for particular techs now (the sort who when I say "my DSL modem just lost sync" don't respond with "OK, now click start->..."). Less frustration for me and them
This is especially critical given that Verisign's business is supposedly trust. They sell SSL certificates, and the only way they can claim they're better to use for them than (say) I am, is that they have an established record of security procedures and trust.
Had trust. Who can take them seriously now?
if it wasn't such an incredibly bad pic. Look at the colour in that thing - it's awful. Personally, if somebody tried to sell me a clipart image gallery with samples like that in it, I'd be rather offended.
That, or the web designers involved in using that pic hire the photoshop work out to lobotomized monkeys.
That wonderful firmware update isn't unusual for them, either. When I bought it, my 8500-8 SATA RAID card (*drool*) didn't support hot addition and removal of entire arrays. One firmware update just quietly mentioned in the release notes that they'd implemented hot addition and removal of RAID arrays. Wow.
/really crap/. Anyway, once I got the card replaced and found someone at 3ware who had a BRAIN ( and was absolutely brilliantly helpful actually) everything was peachy. I'm very happy overall, though I wish they had better web support and card quality control.
My first 3ware card was a horrible dud, and actually caused me a lot of grief. My local dealer was really bad, and as I'm in Australia 3ware wasn't able to help me directly. Oh, and their web support was
I'd be giving it about an 80% chance of saying 'no! that's a bad word!' when presented with "sex". Yay. Pass the silly cultural hangups on to the next generation, and confuse 'em good and proper as well.
There is a bitkeeper -> CVS gateway.
3 03 .1/0889.html
http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0
Please at least check before abusing people for being 'obviously' wrong - 20 seconds on google would've corrected your assumption.
> Use the F12 key.
:-)
Cool
Does that also work under OS9? I know there's some utility to help out under OSX, but due to software compatability we're stuck with OS9 for some time to come.
I love the puck use... that's just brilliant. Kind of like having heated mice (in Western Australia, it's rather hot, with 35 - 40 degree summer days).
Yeah, and PitStop to preflight them before sending them off, too.
Either way, your problems sound suspicious to me. I wouldn't say you're trolling, but there's something wrong here.
/has/ made our lives easier. The cost is much lower, the system performance is a big improvement - sufficiently so to matter - and it's dramatically more stable. Of course, the font set is different, and as the font set may be the core of our stability issues I can't make any clear judgements from the test as it stands. We're unable to use the machine in our main page layout tasks, only for ad layout, due to typeface availablility and document compatability. We'll have to re-evaluate if we ever get the macs fixed and get a full font set for BOTH platforms, of course.
/twice/ what it does in the US (ie AU$3500 vs AU$1450 in the US) and we get InDesign essentially for free with the other Adobe software we need anyway. We can't just buy Quark from the US because Quark refuse to support the US version in Australia. That price difference, the lower platform cost and the better integration into our existing network, makes a Windows + InDesign setup attractive. I don't look forward to virus protection and security issues, but in the end I think it'll work out better.
There is, indeed - we're still trying to find it.
Moving to Windows and InDesign isn't going to make your life easier. You will have to deal with printer not taking InDesign files
I now agree - you definitely are an old-timer in the industry. I don't know of a single printer in our city (Perth) that doesn't accept PDF files, and most now don't accept anything else. It wouldn't matter if we printed using Pagemaker (well, it wouldn't matter to our printers, anyway).
Once again, if your OS is crashing like that, you have IT problems. That's true no whether you're using OS 9, Winders or Linux.
I can't entirely agree there. If there are regular, persistant reliability issues then yes something is definitely wrong beyond the OS. However, part of an OS's job is to deal with the user trying to run things that are misbehaving, not just crash as well. And a facility for obtaining diagnostic information is important for the quick resolution of issues, no matter what the cause, as it reduces the amount of guesswork or trial-and-error involved in troubleshooting a problem.
If you are not seeing this, then there's something very, very wrong. I am beginning to think this is a case of PEBKAC.
Perhaps, but in that case several DTP support specialists and apple dealers in the city are also incompetent. Do you really think that I'd be talking about these issues this way if I hadn't had people in to look at them? NOBODY WE'VE FOUND CAN FIX THIS. And trust me, we've tried. It costs us in wasted user and admin time to have unstable workstations, and we've done what we can to fix the issue. Insulting me does not help make your point.
As for the fonts - that's a real pickle. They were bought from a relatively small foundry that is no longer in business. We are unable to find the original disks - IT was a total mess when I took over, and lots of things have just never been located. And yes, we did buy the fonts - *sigh*. We're looking at just buying some similar typefaces as replacements, but the boss is dragging his heels due to the pretty shocking prices. I suspect that a new, clean font set would fix about 70% of our problems with our DTP setup, and would love to do it. Most of the crashes, for sure, are font related.
As for a move to Windows + InDesign - it
In the end, though, the workstation cost makes it worth considering if nothing else. Quark costs more than
I also don't understand what you mean by "our single (cheap) pilot machine". Does that mean you have one machine which is doing DTP?
No. 7 machines, plus a test machine running InDesign on Win2k that's being used to set ads.
I'd be suspecting that we were just doing something wrong/stupid myself, if it werent for the fact that (a) we
Yeah, I know the puck is gone (thank god). I buy enough macs to know what Apple's latest and greatest has, alas - I work for a newspaper and our publishing is done on Macs at the moment.
/so/ stable that you don't evern need to hard-reset, right - so why would we give you the option? And if you're running OS9, that's your problem eh...).
/need/ our zip drives, and don't like USB 1.1 speeds (and of course the G4s dont have USB 2, except maybe the very latest - not sure there).
/KNOW/ apple can make good hardware - just look at the recent iBooks and other laptops - but they seem to be determined to shoot themselves in the foot on the desktop, using high pricing and retarded/quirky design.
/new/ mice either. They're not bad, but we've still replaced all of them with those MS Wheel Mouse Optical mice so that we have 3 buttons for use in Quark. I also find it vaguely disturbing having to "click the mouse."
/really/ tall building, and see how many times they bounce.
That said, they've replaced the puck with other retarded measures, including the "no reset button" G4 (because after all, MacOS X is
Another doozy is the recent G4s with no eject button on the CD-ROM - great if you like an Apple keyboard with eject key, infuriating if you happen to need another kind of keyboard on your mac, and it doesn't have an eject key. Why, exactly, should they deliberately make it impossible to eject the CD-ROM manually WHEN EMPTY?
I know why it locks the tray when full (it's the only sane thing to do, look how windows handles it - eject CD unexpectedly, bluescreen!) but making it almost impossible to get to the CD-ROM's eject button strikes me as totally retarded.
The removal of the 3 1/2" bay is a PITA too. We happen to
Yes, it's a rant. What really gets me is that I
And, like you, I don't really like the
BTW, I still have a small collection of pucks, and will be keeping them until I can throw them off a
2.5: throw that godawful puck out the window, and plug in a decent 3 button mouse, while cursing apple for their infuriating habits.
Hmm.... well, we are saddled with an unfortunate mess called Suitcase for our font management - I suspect that to be part of the issue we're having. A few possibly dodgy fonts don't help, either.
... but there's SFA information about /how/ they must be tweaked and configured. Most of the Apple dealers know almost nothing about it, including one in our city that /claims/ to be a DTP specialist. If the damnn things just provided some diagnostic information when things went wrong, it'd be possible to at least isolate the issues and fix them.
:-(
The fact is, though, that there's just no excuse for the OS crashing like that for any reason. At the very least, some debugging info and a vaguely useful error message would be nice.
Don't like the fonts? report an error and refuse to load them.
App causes a problem? Kill it, and report an error to the user.
etc.
Not "QuarkExpress caused an error of type 2" followed by a hard crash - 4 times a day.
Therein, really, lies the problem - sure macs might be stable when they're correctly tweaked and configured
Or, of course, the OS could cope with anything going wrong/unexpected without dying. It's always done that - right from OS7. Sure, sometimes it recovers, but it's usually flakey until you reboot it anyway. A bit like win98 really
Anyway, I suspect our issues stem from:
(a) the fact that quark doesn't properly handle network file operations, and in fact Quark's only suggestion is "don't use it on a network" (*lol*) or get OSX... and the quark upgrade.
(b) a few possibly dodgy/damaged fonts, but they're somewhat critical and we can't find replacements.
(C) Suitcase, apparently the dodgiest font manager around.
(d) The use of an NT4 file server.
It's easy to say, in theory, "well you suspect you know what's wrong, go and fix it" but in reality it just doesn't work out like that. All these things cost (quite a lot of) money to even test.
The fact is that we're moving to InDesign on Win2k simply because our single (cheap) pilot machine is about a thousand times as stable as the macs, one third the price, and about 3x as fast to boot.
Craig Ringer
I have a very hetrogenous network at work - MacOS 9, Win98, and LTSP boxes on the client end, NT4, Linux and Sco OpenServer on the server end. I find that the macs take up an unreasonable amount of support time, much of which is saying 'oh, just reset it, it's crashed again'.
/very hard to manage/, unreliable, hard to back up or force users to store data on the network, and generally not suitable for large-scale business use. Hopefully Apple have improved this with OSX, but I still crashed it in 15 minutes (admittedly running Quark under Classic with a font manager).
MacOS 9 + QuarkXPress + Network + Fonts = Crashintosh.
The LTSP boxes need the next largest amount of support. It's a fairly new installation, and we're having more issues than we expected given initial testing. It's working well, but taking more time than I'd like - hopefully that'll change in time.
The Win98 boxes need the least amount of support and attention. They have no floppy drives or CD-ROMs and the USB ports are disabled, so it's hard for users to bring their own stuff in on disk/flash/whatever. They're asked to email it instead - forcing it through our virus scanner. I know, email isn't for that - but if you have no alternative, it works.
OTOH, MS Word (on the '98 machines) does appear to have a magical ability to rearrange toolbars whenever the user looks away from it, resulting in a fair bit of confusion and wasted time.
Eudora, on the 98 boxes, takes as much support as Mozilla on the LTSP machines. OTOH, mozilla is improving - Eudora is still the same old POS.
My point here - I suspect many IT folks don't use macs because past experience says that they're
Heat pollution.
If nothing else, too much power generation and use will cause major problems due to heat output. Our climate is quite senstive, and it's surprising how small changes need to be.
Everything they're talking about there can be done locally at an NNTP server, at least as I read it, and won't affect the wider usenet. So it's more user-interface work and work on a server with a different set of design goals to the current NNTP servers.
I'm all for it. You'll need a proxy server to protect the Exchange box running the MS-NNTP server from direct access by scary things like non-Lookout news readers of course. It sounds like an interesting idea though, and perhaps some of the better / more useful ideas might propagate to other NNTP software.
Wow... I'm impressed. Genuine political system reform - and just when it's most desparately needed.
:-P
That'll hopefully actually FIX the one massive, gaping problem with the American political system (at least as seen from outside of it). No more "Senator for auction, bidding starts at $5m". Except they never seem to be that expensive, that's the sad part.
Of course, Hollings will be out of a job, being "Mr Disney"... so sad
I'm afraid that voters really don't seem to have much power, not anymore. Not when politicians have to take legal bribes to afford the advertising they need to get elected.
So if you don't have the money to get them elected, it does them little good to listen to you.
Depressing, but that's how it seems. At leasst from my perspective, not being a US resident and all.
In Australia, it often feels like we may as well be a US state in terms of how strongly US events affect our own laws and politics, but we don't get a vote in the events that largely determine our eventual laws. As if the politicians think we're another US state...
Gzip is all well and good, but as you point out only does half the job. Tar /could/ be used for archiving, but I'd prefer a format not designed around the concept of linear tape archives myself.
Perhaps something with indexing and the ability to be CLEANLY EXTENDED for more file attributes in the future (MIME type, etc) so that they could be ignored if not undersood?
This is what MIME is for. Rather than adding yet more incomprehensible 3-letter codes on the end of filenames, why don't we use slightly-less-incomprehensible MIME coding in the filesystem metadata?
Think something (under UNIX) like:
$ ls -t filename
file image/jpeg
More and more filesystems support it, as do some other apps. I seem to remember talk of internal MIME type tracking being possible in WinFS (the SQL-Server based MS filesystem for their newer OSes) and maybe even NTFS, as well as in Reiser4, Ext3, maybe reiser3, and no doubt others.
The file extension is the horrible legacy of the MS-DOS 8.3 filenames, and we'd be well rid of it. I'd expect a LONG transition period though (file ext commonly used, but MIME type understood, always used where supported, and considered authorative) - yuk.
Since a reboot if not a kernel relink seems to be needed to change IP address (SCO: More reboots than Win98!) I'm not sure what the use of a DHCP client on OpenServer would be.
As for SCOAdmin, yeah I wish there was something as comprehensive for Linux. Preferably minus the flakey TCL coding that sometimes 'remembers' settings - and never runs again.
The one thing I'll say about OpenServer - it was a big upgrade from Xenix.
If you've ever actually used some of SCO's products, you'd understand why nobody will buy them, even under threat of lawsuit.
The prices they charge for the crap they peddle are revolting, basically. It's UNIX all right - right out of '92.
Craig Ringer