I certainly hope that the producers of these wonder-CGI flicks understand that the reason that movies like "Shrek" and "Monsters, Inc." did well is that they had funny and original plots; the fact that they were digitally rendered was simply an added bonus.
Don't get me wrong; I'd like to see more CG films, but I don't really want that all-familliar Hollywood trend of copying an idea to death.
I predict that there will be a few good flicks out of this rush, and a whole bunch of lousy, plotless, kindergarten-quality films about wombats and potatoes.
Had you read the article, you would know the answer to this is "no":
This does not affect the non-Windows versions, because the non-Windows versions currently do not yet support the feature that this vulnerability occurs in.
I believe that the best way to help your favorite open-source project is to get involved. I can think of countless times that I've heard people whine, moan, and complain about the fact that the open-source application $FOO doesn't have feature $BAR; but the person who wants $BAR isn't willing to either code it or pay someone to.
Free software isn't about getting something for free; it's about the freedom to modify programs to do what you want them to do, not what some arbitrary programmer in a distant company wants you to do. It's about freedom -- not about saving money (although that does appear to be a fringe benefit).
Even if you don't code, chances are you can get someone involved in the project to write something for you by taking care of something they need. Documentation is the first thing that comes to mind; many open-source projects are sadly lacking in this department, and a well-written manual is worth a mountain of coder time. You can also help to provide server space and/or bandwitdh for the project, or to donate hardware for the coders-in-question to use.
The point is that free software is a community effort; and if you aren't willing to be an equal participant of that community, you really don't have much of a say.
Thank you; and double thanks for taking it well and coming up with a good rebuttal. So rare on/. these days...
you normally have 3 tiers in professional ebusiness configurations. web servers, business logic, and database servers.
This is true with JSP-based system (JSP+Web to EJB to DB), but often smaller setups are done with Perl or PHP in a two-tier system (Web+PHP/Perl to DB) that work quite well.
You are quite correct, however, in that most large installations use the three-tier model.
I think we're looking at it from two different angles. You appear to be approaching it from a datacenter admin point of view, like a Qwest rack monkey watching 1,000 servers. My approach imagines an admin with about 20 servers for one e-business/e-commerce solution. If it's one guy's job to keep maybe 8 web servers, three or four servlet engines, and four database backends running, then occasionally publishing a new CD for the web servers is not "completely unacceptable". Plus, with multiple servers, you design one clean layout, burn 8 CD's, and reboot the web servers one at a time so the site never goes down.
Speaking as a sysadmin, keeping one Unix admin around per twenty servers will get very expensive. One Unix admin can handle about fifty machines, assuming they were properly set up and documented to begin with.
Furthermore, one of the big advantages to running a Unix machine for things like this is that you don't need to physically interact with the hardware; for example, I can leave several "extra" Sun Netra X1 server appliances sitting in a rack, powered off, and if one of the production machines fails, I can remotely power the unit on, load an operating system on it (via Jumpstart, or just using dump and netcat), boot it, and configure it to take the place of the now-dead server (which I have powered off remotely). All without leaving my desk (or armchair if I'm telecommuting). I can then replace the dead server at my leisure.
Same goes for patching; I can bring a spare server online, bring the old server down to single user mode, and use the serial console to load patches and updates, all without having to drive over to the colocation facility.
if there is no IP connectivity from the web servers to the 2nd and 3rd tier, how are you going to get there? the web server would submit an ascii url to the servlet engine, and the servlet engine would reply with the content, also over serial. the web clients won't even have access to sending url requests over the serial line. even if they crack the box, LIDS will let you specify precisely which apps/binaries can use the serial port.
Point; but giving that serial links aren't sufficiently fast, it's a moot point at best.
you're right. I'm an idiot. Need more coffee. that makes the whole thing too slow for anything over 128k upstream.
Happens to all of us. And I think I'll get more mud myself...
that of course depends on how well you plan and implement.
Not really; a more complex solution offers more total points of failure; even a well thought-out and well implemented solution is subject to this simple fact.
How about running web servers booted off cd-rom getting all of their content dynamically by calling java servlets against a remote machine using the secure xfer methods covered in yesterday's secure credit card transfer discussion?
There are a couple of good reasons why this unlikely to be a workable solution. First, this requires almost double the equipment (a two-tier minimum), and it requires the front-end servers to have some type of read-only storage, which most server appliances (like the Netra X1) don't have.
Second, keeping the systems patched and up-to-date (which will still be imporant) is even more of a chore, as you can't just install patch foo -- you need to install the patch on a clean system, make a bootable CD, and then go physically insert the CD and reboot the machine to install the patch. In terms of administrator time, this is completely unacceptable.
Third, it requires that you use JSP (and possibly EJB); things like PHP and Perl won't work with this kind of set-up. As nice as JSP+EJB can be for building complex and stateful web applications, it's really lousy for doing simple things like customer-feedback forms and the like.
Fourth, the applications on the second-tier server are still open to exploit, as is the OS on the external server -- it's possible to crack and root a machine even if it has a read-only root filesystem.
Fifth and finally, it completely violates the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, S*). More machines means more overhead for the admins, higher operating costs; and, most importantly, a more complex system. One of those little rules-of-thumb is that the more complex a system becomes, the more easily it will fail.
Something like a serial cable into the "servlet server" with a non-TCP/IP listener on the serial port. At max speed 115KB serial is like a 1Mbit connection. The web servers won't have IP access to the content server, and can't be defaced. Don't have to care about snort logs, tripwire -- all that happy hoo ha.
Want to run a bunch of web servers for load balancing? put an 8-port digiboard in the servlet server.
I fail to see where a 115Kb/s serial connection is equal to a 1Mb/s link; I would suggest checking the numbers again, as I'm pretty sure that the latter is about ten times as fast as the former, and requires less processor overhead -- serial connections consume much more CPU time than ethernet ones.
Snort and tripwire are very useful tools, and whether or not you have a "secure" setup, it's a good idea to run them. Snort is an extremely capable IDS (Intrusion Detection System), and if your uebersecure system is cracked, can provide valuable logs to find the attacker (and the original security hole). Furthermore, it's always a fun thing to watch the IIS exploit attacks pile up against your smug little Apache server...
I can think of several programs that run under Linux/Unix which will play QuickTime.mov files -- xanim and xmms (plus the QuickTime-xmms plugin) will both play non-sorenson QuickTime files. The problem is, almost nothing worth watching (in the world of things QuickTime) is available in anything other than a Sorenson-encoded version.
Sorenson, of course, is owned by Apple, and they are as likely to make it open-source as Microsoft is to release the next Office under the GPL.
Now, mplayer will play.asf,.wmv, and.mpeg files with a variety of options (such as double-size and full-screen), and it will play VideoCDs quite nicely -- I have several movies that were dragged back from China on VCD that look great when run through mplayer. It's a great little video player, but it having the ability to play non-sorenson QuickTime is hardly news.
If you want QuickTime under Linux, with the Sorenson codec, your only option is Crossover (which works quite nicely, and has given me many minutes of movie-trailer viewing bliss).
Considering the number of Windows users that actually bother with updating their system, I have a feeling that Microsoft Tech Support is going to be getting quite a large number of calls.
Taco, you might want to tell the guys at ThinkGeek to send over a case or two of their Demotivator calendars to the Microsoft Quality Assurance people; maybe you can get them to quit and go find jobs more their speed, like selling their collective ass for cheap booze or working for a sewage taste-testing company or something.
I really don't think this is the Microsoft coders' fault either; this is likely one of those features that management insisted upon...I'd almost place a bet that there is some engineer at Microsoft laughing manically and chanting, "I told you so..." from the inside of his cell^Wcubicle.
My company provides IT support to a small-medium sized K-12 school district. They have 5 NT servers, and approximatly 250 workstations running Windows2000/Office2000. I can see no scenario where it would make sense to move them to a free software platform (Linux). MS academic software is not that expensive to start with, so there's not much money to be saved here (approx $50 for Win2k and $50 for Office per station.) Most of the software used by the district would not run under Linux anyway. Aside from the webmail app and their web based library system nearly everything else they use is written for Windows. They couldn't run any of their current educational software packages, including those provided by the state! I love Linux and see that it has a place on the server, embedded in devices and running on hobbiests' machines. However considering the realities of IT today, it just doesn't make sense to roll out Linux on the desktops of organizations either commercial or educational.
Commercial, no.
Educational, yes.
I can see no reason that students can't be taught to use a word processor rather than just Microsoft Word -- learning basic concepts instead of "monkey see, monkey click."
Educational software is, for the most part, a complete crock; and, with the exception of grade-keeping software, doesn't belong in schools. Teachers are paid to teach, not to sit a student in front of some so-called "educational" program and baby-sit them. Some of the computer tutorial software, like the programs that teach you to use Word and Excel by visually showing you what to do, are effective; but these aren't the types of things schools are trying to teach.
The hardware costs make it much more expensive to run Windows in a school environment; Windows and Office 2000 require fairly high-powered workstations which cost the school real money to purchase; comparitive systems to run OSes like BSD and Linux are often donated en masse.
Having all of the computer equipment donated to a school by a business that wants the tax write-off can save even a small school tens of thousands of dollars; which, in turn, can go into things like art programs, improving science education, and hell -- even keeping the school in sporting goods. Go and ask a local principal what they would do if they were given an extra $20,000 to spend at the school on anything but salaries or computers.
As far as not being qualified for anything but "hobbiests", what do you think students are? A hobbiest is someone who is interested in learning as much about something as possible; and a student is someone who is supposed to be learning as much about the subject material as possible. Students aren't like employees -- there is no bottom line to watch, and no such thing as wasted time as long as it's spent learning.
You'll have better luck looking at schools in Europe, especially Germany, France, and the U.K. The U.S. public school system moves about as quickly as a lowered Honda Civic in an off-road rally race; and, in my experience, most public school IS/IT administrators know less about computers than John Ashcroft does about electron field dynamics. This is why few high schools have local area networks or decent internet access, and why fewer still have classes in things as simple as programming in Basic.
Since U.S. schools aren't adeqately funded by the government, they gobble up as much of the private-sector "technology money" as they can possibly gorge themselves on; a signifigant chunk of which comes in the form of discounted licenses for Microsoft software. Kind of ironic that the school still has to buy the computers to run the software (and keep them updated); but I guess by reducing their profit margin from 99.998% to 98%, Microsoft has done their part. Those computers have to be upgraded pretty regularly, of course, and some of the money for that comes from "less worthwhile" programs -- like English, Art, Music, and History.
We are raising a generation of Americans that won't know the difference between a verb and a posessive pronoun, but they'll be able to use the Word grammar-checker, so it all works out in the end, right?
These, among other reasons, are why the U.S. imports its computer engineers from Europe and southeast Asia.
By contrast, European schools don't get the same deep discounts, and the foreign-language support in Windows is pretty horrible (although W2K has made some signifigant improvements in this area). European schools (at least in the three countries mentioned above) are supported wholly by the state, and as such don't require outside funding. This means that, for the most part, the software and hardware are chosen to fit the needs of the instructors and students, rather than to fit the discounts, freebies, and funding-with-strings requirements assigned by the technology companies.
This is why you'll find SuSE, Mandrake, and Debian pretty heavily used in many European schools (and thus, businesses).
AIRC, this type of exploit has been the bane of WuFTPD's existance; one of the reasons I switched to ProFTPD some time ago. Much better security history.
Besides; if you're running a public FTP and it's not in a chroot jail, you are a moron anyways.
Agreed. I never understand people who whine about 'having to use' Windoze, yet don't make the change for better. Even if it's at work. You can either quit and look for a nicer employer, or shut up and deal with it.
Leaving a position you are otherwise happy with simply because they want you to use a very common tool (in this case, Windows) is a very stupid thing to do; and because of the prevalence of Windows in the computer industry, this would be like an auto mechanic refusing to work at a shop that forced him to use the (admittedly buggy-as-hell) electronic diagnostic systems.
In general, nobody should complain about things they can potentially change themselves. And once you're out of Windoze hell, there's no reason to whine. So, sensible people should never whine about anything! Of course if it's not your fault, do complain to the appropriate person.
Sometimes complaint is the most effective form of change. If you feel that strongly about Linux, you should work on promoting it in your organization. Demonstrate its features to those in charge, and provide a comparison between the current solution and your perceived-ideal solution.
I think it's the un-sensible people who don't whine; if you never complain, nobody will ever know that you have a problem.
I don't have to keep bashing M$ because I don't user their products.
You aren't really living up to the first part of that.sig, are you? I like Microsoft about as much as RMS, and don't use their products; but they do hold a very strong position in the business market, and attempting to attack them head-on is like jousting windmills.
Comments like that make me really sad. If you don't make the decision to make a change yourself, then no one will do it for you. Come on... take the initiative and do something new.
Let's play a game of "Hello, Obvious!" I'll give you three clues:
One: The original poster could have been referring to a work machine; he never said that this was his own, personal computer.
Two: Perhaps he telecommutes, and his work requires the use of an application which will only run on Windows.
Three: There are likely many other reasons that he needs a Windows machine; just because he doesn't care to ennumerate them here doesn't mean that he's a clueless and/or spineless moron who is incapable of running a Unix-like operating system.
I'm lucky. I'm a sysadmin. I can run Linux, BSD, and Solaris on my home boxen because I run them at work. Not everyone is so fortunate.
Hydrogen is hardly a fossil fuel; it's abundant, and the combustion byproduct of hydrogen and oxygen (the two fuels used in this case) is none other than water. Pure water, at that.
This is why hydrogen is being looked at so heavily as an "alternative" fuel source -- it's abundant, clean, and very inexpensive.
Joseph Keller's novel Catch-22 seems to have nicely predicted our current system of government, especially as it relates to intellectual property laws and vehicle registration.
With the same novel, he also predicted the clarity and usability of Microsoft technical documentation, and did so before computers were ever invented...utterly amazing...
Stephenson wrote an "eco-thriller" titled Zodiac in 1988 that centers around the use of bacteria to clean up chemical spills (in this case, organic chlorene), much like we are starting to do today with oil spills.
I know that this is the obvious thing to say, but hell, Isaac Asimov would be a great start in reading on things. His stories not only deal with technology, but how technology can get the better of us. As in the story where everyone depends on calculators and doing math by hand is revolutionary (sorry if I forgot the name). He not only shows us where we can go, but also where not to go.
The title of the story about mankind re-discovering mathematics is called "The Feeling of Power".
I will do this sometimes for code that is intended for short-term, internal-only use, as I can often save quite a bit of valuable time.
If the code has to be maintained, forget it; what if I leave the company? Not only does my employer need to find someone who can code in C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, shell script, and assembler, but they have to find someone who knows how all the languages work together. Debugging is also a bit more difficult, as you have to jump between languages, and it can nastily confusing.
For code which is supposed to be release-quality, this is out of the question; you can't expect all of your clients to install Python because GUIs in Java are grotty, or install Perl because you don't want to screw with hashes and regexps in C. Release code also needs to be maintained, and there is going to be some developer turnover; it'll be easier to replace coders who leave when you don't need to list five languages as "required" on the employment-availablity posting.
Slashdot Mirror
You forgot "Whiskey of Zarathustra" -- the preferred drink of WOZ technical support.
I certainly hope that the producers of these wonder-CGI flicks understand that the reason that movies like "Shrek" and "Monsters, Inc." did well is that they had funny and original plots; the fact that they were digitally rendered was simply an added bonus.
Don't get me wrong; I'd like to see more CG films, but I don't really want that all-familliar Hollywood trend of copying an idea to death.
I predict that there will be a few good flicks out of this rush, and a whole bunch of lousy, plotless, kindergarten-quality films about wombats and potatoes.
I believe that the best way to help your favorite open-source project is to get involved. I can think of countless times that I've heard people whine, moan, and complain about the fact that the open-source application $FOO doesn't have feature $BAR; but the person who wants $BAR isn't willing to either code it or pay someone to.
Free software isn't about getting something for free; it's about the freedom to modify programs to do what you want them to do, not what some arbitrary programmer in a distant company wants you to do. It's about freedom -- not about saving money (although that does appear to be a fringe benefit).
Even if you don't code, chances are you can get someone involved in the project to write something for you by taking care of something they need. Documentation is the first thing that comes to mind; many open-source projects are sadly lacking in this department, and a well-written manual is worth a mountain of coder time. You can also help to provide server space and/or bandwitdh for the project, or to donate hardware for the coders-in-question to use.
The point is that free software is a community effort; and if you aren't willing to be an equal participant of that community, you really don't have much of a say.
Hiro, nice shredding!
/. these days...
Thank you; and double thanks for taking it well and coming up with a good rebuttal. So rare on
you normally have 3 tiers in professional ebusiness configurations. web servers, business logic, and database servers.
This is true with JSP-based system (JSP+Web to EJB to DB), but often smaller setups are done with Perl or PHP in a two-tier system (Web+PHP/Perl to DB) that work quite well.
You are quite correct, however, in that most large installations use the three-tier model.
I think we're looking at it from two different angles. You appear to be approaching it from a datacenter admin point of view, like a Qwest rack monkey watching 1,000 servers. My approach imagines an admin with about 20 servers for one e-business/e-commerce solution. If it's one guy's job to keep maybe 8 web servers, three or four servlet engines, and four database backends running, then occasionally publishing a new CD for the web servers is not "completely unacceptable". Plus, with multiple servers, you design one clean layout, burn 8 CD's, and reboot the web servers one at a time so the site never goes down.
Speaking as a sysadmin, keeping one Unix admin around per twenty servers will get very expensive. One Unix admin can handle about fifty machines, assuming they were properly set up and documented to begin with.
Furthermore, one of the big advantages to running a Unix machine for things like this is that you don't need to physically interact with the hardware; for example, I can leave several "extra" Sun Netra X1 server appliances sitting in a rack, powered off, and if one of the production machines fails, I can remotely power the unit on, load an operating system on it (via Jumpstart, or just using dump and netcat), boot it, and configure it to take the place of the now-dead server (which I have powered off remotely). All without leaving my desk (or armchair if I'm telecommuting). I can then replace the dead server at my leisure.
Same goes for patching; I can bring a spare server online, bring the old server down to single user mode, and use the serial console to load patches and updates, all without having to drive over to the colocation facility.
if there is no IP connectivity from the web servers to the 2nd and 3rd tier, how are you going to get there? the web server would submit an ascii url to the servlet engine, and the servlet engine would reply with the content, also over serial. the web clients won't even have access to sending url requests over the serial line. even if they crack the box, LIDS will let you specify precisely which apps/binaries can use the serial port.
Point; but giving that serial links aren't sufficiently fast, it's a moot point at best.
you're right. I'm an idiot. Need more coffee. that makes the whole thing too slow for anything over 128k upstream.
Happens to all of us. And I think I'll get more mud myself...
that of course depends on how well you plan and implement.
Not really; a more complex solution offers more total points of failure; even a well thought-out and well implemented solution is subject to this simple fact.
How about running web servers booted off cd-rom getting all of their content dynamically by calling java servlets against a remote machine using the secure xfer methods covered in yesterday's secure credit card transfer discussion?
There are a couple of good reasons why this unlikely to be a workable solution. First, this requires almost double the equipment (a two-tier minimum), and it requires the front-end servers to have some type of read-only storage, which most server appliances (like the Netra X1) don't have.
Second, keeping the systems patched and up-to-date (which will still be imporant) is even more of a chore, as you can't just install patch foo -- you need to install the patch on a clean system, make a bootable CD, and then go physically insert the CD and reboot the machine to install the patch. In terms of administrator time, this is completely unacceptable.
Third, it requires that you use JSP (and possibly EJB); things like PHP and Perl won't work with this kind of set-up. As nice as JSP+EJB can be for building complex and stateful web applications, it's really lousy for doing simple things like customer-feedback forms and the like.
Fourth, the applications on the second-tier server are still open to exploit, as is the OS on the external server -- it's possible to crack and root a machine even if it has a read-only root filesystem.
Fifth and finally, it completely violates the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, S*). More machines means more overhead for the admins, higher operating costs; and, most importantly, a more complex system. One of those little rules-of-thumb is that the more complex a system becomes, the more easily it will fail.
Something like a serial cable into the "servlet server" with a non-TCP/IP listener on the serial port. At max speed 115KB serial is like a 1Mbit connection. The web servers won't have IP access to the content server, and can't be defaced. Don't have to care about snort logs, tripwire -- all that happy hoo ha.
Want to run a bunch of web servers for load balancing? put an 8-port digiboard in the servlet server.
I fail to see where a 115Kb/s serial connection is equal to a 1Mb/s link; I would suggest checking the numbers again, as I'm pretty sure that the latter is about ten times as fast as the former, and requires less processor overhead -- serial connections consume much more CPU time than ethernet ones.
Snort and tripwire are very useful tools, and whether or not you have a "secure" setup, it's a good idea to run them. Snort is an extremely capable IDS (Intrusion Detection System), and if your uebersecure system is cracked, can provide valuable logs to find the attacker (and the original security hole). Furthermore, it's always a fun thing to watch the IIS exploit attacks pile up against your smug little Apache server...
HTH. HAND.
I can think of several programs that run under Linux/Unix which will play QuickTime .mov files -- xanim and xmms (plus the QuickTime-xmms plugin) will both play non-sorenson QuickTime files. The problem is, almost nothing worth watching (in the world of things QuickTime) is available in anything other than a Sorenson-encoded version.
.asf, .wmv, and .mpeg files with a variety of options (such as double-size and full-screen), and it will play VideoCDs quite nicely -- I have several movies that were dragged back from China on VCD that look great when run through mplayer. It's a great little video player, but it having the ability to play non-sorenson QuickTime is hardly news.
Sorenson, of course, is owned by Apple, and they are as likely to make it open-source as Microsoft is to release the next Office under the GPL.
Now, mplayer will play
If you want QuickTime under Linux, with the Sorenson codec, your only option is Crossover (which works quite nicely, and has given me many minutes of movie-trailer viewing bliss).
My favorite game is /usr/bin/gcc.
/etc/mail/sendmail.cf, but I've only been playing it for a few years, so I'm still a beginner...)
(I would say
I haven't looked at the changelog yet, but I'm sure that there's a line reading something like
/promise/ not to corrupt filesystems when you 'umount /mnt/tmp/lifes_work'."
"This time we
All the same, many kudos to the kernel guys for giving me something new to play with for the holiday!
Considering the number of Windows users that actually bother with updating their system, I have a feeling that Microsoft Tech Support is going to be getting quite a large number of calls.
Taco, you might want to tell the guys at ThinkGeek to send over a case or two of their Demotivator calendars to the Microsoft Quality Assurance people; maybe you can get them to quit and go find jobs more their speed, like selling their collective ass for cheap booze or working for a sewage taste-testing company or something.
I really don't think this is the Microsoft coders' fault either; this is likely one of those features that management insisted upon...I'd almost place a bet that there is some engineer at Microsoft laughing manically and chanting, "I told you so..." from the inside of his cell^Wcubicle.
My company provides IT support to a small-medium sized K-12 school district. They have 5 NT servers, and approximatly 250 workstations running Windows2000/Office2000. I can see no scenario where it would make sense to move them to a free software platform (Linux). MS academic software is not that expensive to start with, so there's not much money to be saved here (approx $50 for Win2k and $50 for Office per station.) Most of the software used by the district would not run under Linux anyway. Aside from the webmail app and their web based library system nearly everything else they use is written for Windows. They couldn't run any of their current educational software packages, including those provided by the state! I love Linux and see that it has a place on the server, embedded in devices and running on hobbiests' machines. However considering the realities of IT today, it just doesn't make sense to roll out Linux on the desktops of organizations either commercial or educational.
Commercial, no.
Educational, yes.
I can see no reason that students can't be taught to use a word processor rather than just Microsoft Word -- learning basic concepts instead of "monkey see, monkey click."
Educational software is, for the most part, a complete crock; and, with the exception of grade-keeping software, doesn't belong in schools. Teachers are paid to teach, not to sit a student in front of some so-called "educational" program and baby-sit them. Some of the computer tutorial software, like the programs that teach you to use Word and Excel by visually showing you what to do, are effective; but these aren't the types of things schools are trying to teach.
The hardware costs make it much more expensive to run Windows in a school environment; Windows and Office 2000 require fairly high-powered workstations which cost the school real money to purchase; comparitive systems to run OSes like BSD and Linux are often donated en masse.
Having all of the computer equipment donated to a school by a business that wants the tax write-off can save even a small school tens of thousands of dollars; which, in turn, can go into things like art programs, improving science education, and hell -- even keeping the school in sporting goods. Go and ask a local principal what they would do if they were given an extra $20,000 to spend at the school on anything but salaries or computers.
As far as not being qualified for anything but "hobbiests", what do you think students are? A hobbiest is someone who is interested in learning as much about something as possible; and a student is someone who is supposed to be learning as much about the subject material as possible. Students aren't like employees -- there is no bottom line to watch, and no such thing as wasted time as long as it's spent learning.
You'll have better luck looking at schools in Europe, especially Germany, France, and the U.K. The U.S. public school system moves about as quickly as a lowered Honda Civic in an off-road rally race; and, in my experience, most public school IS/IT administrators know less about computers than John Ashcroft does about electron field dynamics. This is why few high schools have local area networks or decent internet access, and why fewer still have classes in things as simple as programming in Basic.
Since U.S. schools aren't adeqately funded by the government, they gobble up as much of the private-sector "technology money" as they can possibly gorge themselves on; a signifigant chunk of which comes in the form of discounted licenses for Microsoft software. Kind of ironic that the school still has to buy the computers to run the software (and keep them updated); but I guess by reducing their profit margin from 99.998% to 98%, Microsoft has done their part. Those computers have to be upgraded pretty regularly, of course, and some of the money for that comes from "less worthwhile" programs -- like English, Art, Music, and History.
We are raising a generation of Americans that won't know the difference between a verb and a posessive pronoun, but they'll be able to use the Word grammar-checker, so it all works out in the end, right?
These, among other reasons, are why the U.S. imports its computer engineers from Europe and southeast Asia.
By contrast, European schools don't get the same deep discounts, and the foreign-language support in Windows is pretty horrible (although W2K has made some signifigant improvements in this area). European schools (at least in the three countries mentioned above) are supported wholly by the state, and as such don't require outside funding. This means that, for the most part, the software and hardware are chosen to fit the needs of the instructors and students, rather than to fit the discounts, freebies, and funding-with-strings requirements assigned by the technology companies.
This is why you'll find SuSE, Mandrake, and Debian pretty heavily used in many European schools (and thus, businesses).
But that's just my opinion; I could be wrong.
And we keep accusing Microsoft of trying to assimilate everything... *grin*
SpecialOlympics: ;)
Do whatever you want, however you want, because it's the effort that counts. Keep the snipers, though, because everybody gets shot.
AIRC, this type of exploit has been the bane of WuFTPD's existance; one of the reasons I switched to ProFTPD some time ago. Much better security history.
Besides; if you're running a public FTP and it's not in a chroot jail, you are a moron anyways.
Agreed. I never understand people who whine about 'having to use' Windoze, yet don't make the change for better. Even if it's at work. You can either quit and look for a nicer employer, or shut up and deal with it.
.sig, are you? I like Microsoft about as much as RMS, and don't use their products; but they do hold a very strong position in the business market, and attempting to attack them head-on is like jousting windmills.
Leaving a position you are otherwise happy with simply because they want you to use a very common tool (in this case, Windows) is a very stupid thing to do; and because of the prevalence of Windows in the computer industry, this would be like an auto mechanic refusing to work at a shop that forced him to use the (admittedly buggy-as-hell) electronic diagnostic systems.
In general, nobody should complain about things they can potentially change themselves. And once you're out of Windoze hell, there's no reason to whine. So, sensible people should never whine about anything! Of course if it's not your fault, do complain to the appropriate person.
Sometimes complaint is the most effective form of change. If you feel that strongly about Linux, you should work on promoting it in your organization. Demonstrate its features to those in charge, and provide a comparison between the current solution and your perceived-ideal solution.
I think it's the un-sensible people who don't whine; if you never complain, nobody will ever know that you have a problem.
I don't have to keep bashing M$ because I don't user their products.
You aren't really living up to the first part of that
Comments like that make me really sad. If you don't make the decision to make a change yourself, then no one will do it for you. Come on... take the initiative and do something new.
Let's play a game of "Hello, Obvious!" I'll give you three clues:
One: The original poster could have been referring to a work machine; he never said that this was his own, personal computer.
Two: Perhaps he telecommutes, and his work requires the use of an application which will only run on Windows.
Three: There are likely many other reasons that he needs a Windows machine; just because he doesn't care to ennumerate them here doesn't mean that he's a clueless and/or spineless moron who is incapable of running a Unix-like operating system.
I'm lucky. I'm a sysadmin. I can run Linux, BSD, and Solaris on my home boxen because I run them at work. Not everyone is so fortunate.
What part of "Hydrogen micro-turbine" didn't you get? *grin*
Hydrogen is hardly a fossil fuel; it's abundant, and the combustion byproduct of hydrogen and oxygen (the two fuels used in this case) is none other than water. Pure water, at that.
This is why hydrogen is being looked at so heavily as an "alternative" fuel source -- it's abundant, clean, and very inexpensive.
Your information is perfectly safe.
Oh, and by the way -- thanks for the christmas gift. I've always wanted a silver Ferrari.
Joseph Keller's novel Catch-22 seems to have nicely predicted our current system of government, especially as it relates to intellectual property laws and vehicle registration.
With the same novel, he also predicted the clarity and usability of Microsoft technical documentation, and did so before computers were ever invented...utterly amazing...
Stephenson wrote an "eco-thriller" titled Zodiac in 1988 that centers around the use of bacteria to clean up chemical spills (in this case, organic chlorene), much like we are starting to do today with oil spills.
Definitely not computer related. *grin*
I know that this is the obvious thing to say, but hell, Isaac Asimov would be a great start in reading on things. His stories not only deal with technology, but how technology can get the better of us. As in the story where everyone depends on calculators and doing math by hand is revolutionary (sorry if I forgot the name). He not only shows us where we can go, but also where not to go.
The title of the story about mankind re-discovering mathematics is called "The Feeling of Power".
Great, so you can suck at Quake in parallel now...
I will do this sometimes for code that is intended for short-term, internal-only use, as I can often save quite a bit of valuable time.
If the code has to be maintained, forget it; what if I leave the company? Not only does my employer need to find someone who can code in C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, shell script, and assembler, but they have to find someone who knows how all the languages work together. Debugging is also a bit more difficult, as you have to jump between languages, and it can nastily confusing.
For code which is supposed to be release-quality, this is out of the question; you can't expect all of your clients to install Python because GUIs in Java are grotty, or install Perl because you don't want to screw with hashes and regexps in C. Release code also needs to be maintained, and there is going to be some developer turnover; it'll be easier to replace coders who leave when you don't need to list five languages as "required" on the employment-availablity posting.