I don't think so, because as I understand it, that's for the Standard version of linux which has a 12-month lifetime (which means 9 or less by the time we get it rolled out). I'd love to be wrong and that one could get errata for several years for standard Linux or Enterprise that way.
Yes, but someone has to produce the patches. I don't use up-to-date currently, I do wget of a mirror and then do rpm -Fvh commands to upgrade what I want. That's not the problem, it's the existence of updates in the first place.
And as I understand it, won't one of those commands update me to the latest distribution of RH not just fixing the software I have, but replacing a bunch of things that don't necessarily have problems? That means new things break, people come asking "How do I do this now? It used to work." etc.
I understand why Redhat wants to try to collect money from its vast user base that uses RH to get actual work done, but there doesn't seem to be a reasonably priced option for non-power users.
For home/hobbiest users, there is the free downloadable Standard Linux. But, with at most 12 months of security updates, this isn't really a viable option for use in any environment outside the home (and not even for a lot of them). Personally, I want to use my computer, not be updating it all the time.
My situation at work is this: I'm a researcher. Since I'm one of just a few with any expertise, I'm the de facto sysadm for about 25-30 machines running RH 7.2 which we installed just about a year ago. We use the machines mostly as desktops. Lots of people don't run anything besides ssh, mozilla, and OpenOffice plus the usual suite of calculators, CD players, etc.
Since my real job isn't taking care of these machines, and since I don't want to interupt people's work, upgrading every 12 months is out of the question. But, spending $180/yr/machine on support I really don't need is also not a great option. All we need is security updates for these systems so we don't get hacked. That's it. I don't need Oracle certification, etc.
But, I don't see any way in RedHat's plan to give me minimal support for a long period of time (2-3 years) for a reasonable cost. Of course maybe their update RPMs will be available somewhere since, after all, this is free (open source) software. Barring that, it looks like RedHat will cost us a lot more than MS would.
I'm also of the opinion that this model of release every 4 months is not viable anymore. Things just aren't progressing that quickly any more. IMO, RedHat should be making a new release of their standard product every 18-24 months and releasing service packs that update critical packages like the kernel and X (to deal with hardware compatibility), security updates, and maybe essential applications like KDE, GNOME, mozilla. I'd be more than happy to pay a reasonable amount ($50/yr/machine) for something like this.
It is Mitchell Baker, but Mitchell is a woman. So, I don't know who she is more pissed at, people who spell her name wrong or people who mistake her gender.
That's not really the point, though. Science can prove that aspirin does work by testing aspirin vs. a sugar pill.
The vast majority of alternative remedies fail this test. In fact, the definition of "alternative" could be something that can't be shown to work (without serious side effects). If it could be, it would be accepted by "the establishment" and cease to be alternative.
[The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media.]
The discoverer may not have much choice in the matter. For example, a reviewer may have leaked the story, or he may worry that someone else is going to scoop him, or he may work (horrors of horrors) for an institution with a PR department (meaning just about any university, research lab, or company).
In all the cases you've mentioned, what you're talking about is simultaneous release. The scientist is submitting through the normal peer review and publication process as well as pitching the story to the media. The full information is there for qualified people in the field to evaluate the claim.
While some (lots?) of people don't care for this practice, it is accepted and not what the author is commenting on. (E.g. Pons and Fleshman did not submit their results to Physics Review Letters the same day, as far as I know.)
[The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection.]
Like a lot of particle physics or astrophysics these days.
You want to give an example? Just because the detectors used in these enterprises operate on very small, fleeting signals, doesn't mean that the results are somehow less solid. Also, a lots of times you might see something referred to as "Evidence for" rather than "Discovery of." The former tends to mean something like "Based on the statistics, we're 99% sure, but there could be something we've overlooked."
If you hooked up dozens (hundreds?) of the worlds largest scientific laboratories and research institutions, yes, call it Internet3.
I'm not a big fan of the name Internet2, but what they're doing is setting up a backbone that's not ATT/Qwest/etc to connect people with high bandwidth requirements. (And developing/testing the technology that will make its way to the commercial internet in time). Remember, the commerical internet is a whole lot of different networks too (which is why its called the *Inter*net).
You're statement of Unless they can figure out a way to send data that fast over public internet makes only a little more sense than saying "This is just what happens when you send data via Qwest. Unless they can figure out how to send data that fast over AT&T, they haven't accomplished much."
Of course one difference is that there is no traffic routed from the Internet onto Internet2 (the reverse is not true).
No, SPIRES is just an indexing service (but of, as you say, just about every article). arXiv.org (which I think is now at Cornell) stores preprints of a huge number of these articles (and lots of articles in other fields).
Of course, SPIRES and arxiv are very well cross-linked.
One of the neat things about arxiv.org is that a lot of the older papers will be automatically generated from Latex source when you request.
As I recall, Alphas with NT pre-installed were offered for about 25% less than the OSF/Digital-Unix/Tru64 versions because they SPECed about 25% slower.
Artifacting is different than resolution. Artifacting is usually related to a bad transfer, not using the bandwidth available correctly. And sure, a good TV will make this more noticable. The thing I notice most often is dimly lit faces in close ups where people aren't moving much. Then you see the "dither" pattern freezing and moving slightly at about 2 Hz.
But, DVDs from a progressive player on one of these sets looks fantastic. So good, in fact, that the HD-HBO that my boss gets doesn't look immediately better (not done A-B comparison, though, and that signal may be further compressed by the cable company). It's not the end-all be-all, but it is so much better than what you'll see on a 27" NTSC set.
BTW, you are correct about the numbers for anamorphic DVD.
Well, the Phoenix people at mozilla.org were asked by the people at Phoenix the BIOS company to change the name.
So I'd say this is a pretty good guess.
So there should be levels of "friendship" in the whitelist, so that some senders can be considered dubious (their mail shouldn't be deleted like spam, but perhaps placed in a different "Uninteresting" folder).
I, for one, would love to see a feature like this in a mail program!
Actually, I'd like to participate in the development of an existing open source email app if someone could recommend one. Java based would be nice.
SpamAssassin already does something like this. First, it comes with a set of whitelisted addresses, like ebay.com, etc. It's quite possible that Cryptogram will be included in that list next time around.
But better than that, SA has something called autowhitelisting that keeps track of the average spam score for people who sucessfully get mail delivered to you (through the filter). This means that a good friend, who's mails are normally fine, can send you a spam-ish mail that gets through, or if your friends are borderline, like above, they may only get a few points for being a friend and a spam-ish mail will trigger the filter.
If you really want to go this route, you have to buy three (Sony, Nintendo, Sega, MS (one of those is out of business but I don't remember which) consoles every 2 years, since they have exclusive games.
Then you still can't play Neverwinter Nights, Warcraft III, The Sims, Civilization, etc.
My boss is on the console upgrade treadmill with his kids. I guarantee you he spends more upgrading those than I do on my PC.
Our university may have such an agreement with Redhat, I don't know. So far, we've been getting by just fine with the free support. But, note that I'm not arguing (necessarily) for a continuation of the status quo. If we had a reasonably priced support option (say $50/machine/year) I know we'd pony up for that. In fact, I'm encouraged by what Redhat is calling "Advanced Workstation" or whatever. I haven't seen pricing/support details, but I could imagine us going that route plus a copy of advanced server if the total cost is reasonable.
Patching software like you say has two problems. First at some point (and you don't really know when that will occur) chasing down vulnerabilities, seeing if they apply, and patching code might be more work than just upgrading. But, you don't know which is less work until you've chosen one and done it for a year. Second, I don't have enough faith in my ability to do it right, and the costs of getting hacked are considerable.
Remember, I don't make my living supporting linux either. I support linux so I can do what I do for a living.
BTW, I use Linux in my living room too (Mandrake) and there a one-year upgrade timetable is pretty tolerable (although not for my cable-firewall, which also sits in the living room).
Because we often use them as a computing cluster and we have lots of disk distributed around too. If we were just a corporate-style group of desktops, your solution would make sense, but for us it wouldn't work.
They sure do need support. Apache/SSH/PHP will have a vulnerability and need to be upgraded. And doing a complete upgrade to a new, untested, unknown OS is in no way "easier" than getting a quality tested patch for the one program that is broken.
So except in some very rare cases, I can't see a reason to run a Linux distro that's over a year old.
You can't? Just guessing here, but I bet you use linux in your dormroom or your bedroom.
In April, a co-worker and I upgraded roughly 15-20 machines from RH 6.1 to RH 7.2. We don't have IT staff as such, we are both scientists in academia who happen to know a fair bit about system admin. We work in an academic environment.
Our 15-20 machines are all slightly different. They all needed to have certain config files backed up and restored. They each have a different person with different skills and different requirements sitting in front of them. So, how did it go?
The first machine probably took 2 hours of fairly close attention to install. Everything had to be documented so we could reproduce it. Then, I used that machine for a few weeks, noting what else needed to be tweaked and installed. Then, one by one, we installed the OS on the other machines. This process took about 2-3 weeks and took say 30-60 minutes of real work per machine including the updates. Then the users got a hold of them. One person notices that program X doesn't exist anymore. Another notices Y doesn't exist. Someone else notices that xvscan doesn't work, so we have to figure out how to use xsane. This continues for a month or more, each time requiring one of us to install more software on the systems and test it out. The first machine (mine) is determined to be completely out of sync due to different choices in the installer, so it is done from scratch.
I highly doubt this is a "rare case." These are just desktop machines, not even mission critical servers (although one was a web/db server).
I sure don't look forward to repeating this excercise in January 2004. If Red Hat's options are a 12-month upgrade cycle or $800/machine, we'll find some other company. But, their promised corporate desktop may be the answer for us if its priced reasonably.
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I don't think so, because as I understand it, that's for the Standard version of linux which has a 12-month lifetime (which means 9 or less by the time we get it rolled out). I'd love to be wrong and that one could get errata for several years for standard Linux or Enterprise that way.
And as I understand it, won't one of those commands update me to the latest distribution of RH not just fixing the software I have, but replacing a bunch of things that don't necessarily have problems? That means new things break, people come asking "How do I do this now? It used to work." etc.
For home/hobbiest users, there is the free downloadable Standard Linux. But, with at most 12 months of security updates, this isn't really a viable option for use in any environment outside the home (and not even for a lot of them). Personally, I want to use my computer, not be updating it all the time.
My situation at work is this: I'm a researcher. Since I'm one of just a few with any expertise, I'm the de facto sysadm for about 25-30 machines running RH 7.2 which we installed just about a year ago. We use the machines mostly as desktops. Lots of people don't run anything besides ssh, mozilla, and OpenOffice plus the usual suite of calculators, CD players, etc.
Since my real job isn't taking care of these machines, and since I don't want to interupt people's work, upgrading every 12 months is out of the question. But, spending $180/yr/machine on support I really don't need is also not a great option. All we need is security updates for these systems so we don't get hacked. That's it. I don't need Oracle certification, etc.
But, I don't see any way in RedHat's plan to give me minimal support for a long period of time (2-3 years) for a reasonable cost. Of course maybe their update RPMs will be available somewhere since, after all, this is free (open source) software. Barring that, it looks like RedHat will cost us a lot more than MS would.
I'm also of the opinion that this model of release every 4 months is not viable anymore. Things just aren't progressing that quickly any more. IMO, RedHat should be making a new release of their standard product every 18-24 months and releasing service packs that update critical packages like the kernel and X (to deal with hardware compatibility), security updates, and maybe essential applications like KDE, GNOME, mozilla. I'd be more than happy to pay a reasonable amount ($50/yr/machine) for something like this.
But in this case, this Mitchell is a woman. Confusing, I know.
It is Mitchell Baker, but Mitchell is a woman. So, I don't know who she is more pissed at, people who spell her name wrong or people who mistake her gender.
The vast majority of alternative remedies fail this test. In fact, the definition of "alternative" could be something that can't be shown to work (without serious side effects). If it could be, it would be accepted by "the establishment" and cease to be alternative.
In all the cases you've mentioned, what you're talking about is simultaneous release. The scientist is submitting through the normal peer review and publication process as well as pitching the story to the media. The full information is there for qualified people in the field to evaluate the claim.
While some (lots?) of people don't care for this practice, it is accepted and not what the author is commenting on. (E.g. Pons and Fleshman did not submit their results to Physics Review Letters the same day, as far as I know.)
You want to give an example? Just because the detectors used in these enterprises operate on very small, fleeting signals, doesn't mean that the results are somehow less solid. Also, a lots of times you might see something referred to as "Evidence for" rather than "Discovery of." The former tends to mean something like "Based on the statistics, we're 99% sure, but there could be something we've overlooked."
I'm not a big fan of the name Internet2, but what they're doing is setting up a backbone that's not ATT/Qwest/etc to connect people with high bandwidth requirements. (And developing/testing the technology that will make its way to the commercial internet in time). Remember, the commerical internet is a whole lot of different networks too (which is why its called the *Inter*net).
You're statement of Unless they can figure out a way to send data that fast over public internet makes only a little more sense than saying "This is just what happens when you send data via Qwest. Unless they can figure out how to send data that fast over AT&T, they haven't accomplished much."
Of course one difference is that there is no traffic routed from the Internet onto Internet2 (the reverse is not true).
Of course, SPIRES and arxiv are very well cross-linked.
One of the neat things about arxiv.org is that a lot of the older papers will be automatically generated from Latex source when you request.
Because it might allow them to link up other transactions made with aliases?
As I recall, Alphas with NT pre-installed were offered for about 25% less than the OSF/Digital-Unix/Tru64 versions because they SPECed about 25% slower.
But, DVDs from a progressive player on one of these sets looks fantastic. So good, in fact, that the HD-HBO that my boss gets doesn't look immediately better (not done A-B comparison, though, and that signal may be further compressed by the cable company). It's not the end-all be-all, but it is so much better than what you'll see on a 27" NTSC set.
BTW, you are correct about the numbers for anamorphic DVD.
Basically, in the BIOS you can select to run the backup version, which, if you're smart, is a backup of the last known good BIOS.
Well, the Phoenix people at mozilla.org were asked by the people at Phoenix the BIOS company to change the name. So I'd say this is a pretty good guess.
SpamAssassin already does something like this. First, it comes with a set of whitelisted addresses, like ebay.com, etc. It's quite possible that Cryptogram will be included in that list next time around.
But better than that, SA has something called autowhitelisting that keeps track of the average spam score for people who sucessfully get mail delivered to you (through the filter). This means that a good friend, who's mails are normally fine, can send you a spam-ish mail that gets through, or if your friends are borderline, like above, they may only get a few points for being a friend and a spam-ish mail will trigger the filter.
Then you still can't play Neverwinter Nights, Warcraft III, The Sims, Civilization, etc.
My boss is on the console upgrade treadmill with his kids. I guarantee you he spends more upgrading those than I do on my PC.
Don't think so. I'm using the stock 1.2.1 build, which I don't think has xft.
Spaceflight, no matter how you do it, is a dangerous business. Probably doing it in 20 year old vehicles makes it more so.
I pretty much know how lossy compressions work and how gzip/zip/etc work, but what does this do (that must be specific to audio) that zip doesn't?
Patching software like you say has two problems. First at some point (and you don't really know when that will occur) chasing down vulnerabilities, seeing if they apply, and patching code might be more work than just upgrading. But, you don't know which is less work until you've chosen one and done it for a year. Second, I don't have enough faith in my ability to do it right, and the costs of getting hacked are considerable.
Remember, I don't make my living supporting linux either. I support linux so I can do what I do for a living.
BTW, I use Linux in my living room too (Mandrake) and there a one-year upgrade timetable is pretty tolerable (although not for my cable-firewall, which also sits in the living room).
Because we often use them as a computing cluster and we have lots of disk distributed around too. If we were just a corporate-style group of desktops, your solution would make sense, but for us it wouldn't work.
You hobbyists just don't get it.
Exactly. Twelve months is a reasonable target for the uptime of a linux system, not its lifetime!
You can't? Just guessing here, but I bet you use linux in your dormroom or your bedroom.
In April, a co-worker and I upgraded roughly 15-20 machines from RH 6.1 to RH 7.2. We don't have IT staff as such, we are both scientists in academia who happen to know a fair bit about system admin. We work in an academic environment.
Our 15-20 machines are all slightly different. They all needed to have certain config files backed up and restored. They each have a different person with different skills and different requirements sitting in front of them. So, how did it go?
The first machine probably took 2 hours of fairly close attention to install. Everything had to be documented so we could reproduce it. Then, I used that machine for a few weeks, noting what else needed to be tweaked and installed. Then, one by one, we installed the OS on the other machines. This process took about 2-3 weeks and took say 30-60 minutes of real work per machine including the updates. Then the users got a hold of them. One person notices that program X doesn't exist anymore. Another notices Y doesn't exist. Someone else notices that xvscan doesn't work, so we have to figure out how to use xsane. This continues for a month or more, each time requiring one of us to install more software on the systems and test it out. The first machine (mine) is determined to be completely out of sync due to different choices in the installer, so it is done from scratch.
I highly doubt this is a "rare case." These are just desktop machines, not even mission critical servers (although one was a web/db server).
I sure don't look forward to repeating this excercise in January 2004. If Red Hat's options are a 12-month upgrade cycle or $800/machine, we'll find some other company. But, their promised corporate desktop may be the answer for us if its priced reasonably.
Running unsupported OSes is dangerous as exploits appear constantly (we saw that this weekend)