I have never rebooted my WRT54G Linksys router since I got rid of my wireless landline phone. Sometimes the frequency used by those phones can interfere with the Linksys wireless. When I had one, I had to reboot very frequently. Also my router is powered through a UPS.
I believe that Sun is capable of adding an enormous amount of value to the Mysql server in the way of advanced feature set. Imagine that Sun brings the Mysql server up to par with Oracle's product offering, but continues to charge the same amount. Where are sales going -- of both their hardware and Mysql? Sun is perfectly capable of some fairly stunning software advances. Look at ZFS and Dtrace. If they can pull this off, Mysql will be a big winner. The free version might not be a big winner though.
Obviously the first hurdle into this centralized environment will be a dramatic increase in bandwidth pipe everywhere (at a time when it seems that all future bandwidth will be soaked up by the music/video on demand businesses).
The second hurdle will be applications management. The computer utility companies will have to have every available software program ready for quick install, including the big names like Oracle. Recently when I looked in to outsourcing our Exchange servers I could find any hosting provider that could come near to our internal costs. Such a possibility will happen when Microsoft says it's time.
Microsoft is a rabidly competitive company. Their objective is to own computing from MP3 players to "big iron". They intend to kill all competition by both legal and illegal/unethical means. OSS is a competitor. So people involved in OSS need to understand that OSS is in Microsoft's cross-hairs in a big way.
The people who have the most vested in OSS, the developers, the companies, etc, need to understand this and react is a cohesive way in terms of both software development and marketing. Otherwise, OSS at worst may not survive, at best will continue (as it has for years) to be a second player esp. on the desktop and the small to medium business server market.
I don't know how long it took for you to find that flimsy article, but this turned up SECOND under a Google search http://ww2.ps-sp.gc.ca/publications/corrections/pdf/199670_e.pdf with search words "child molestation recidivism rate". The fact is that most of the offenders have permanent psychological underdevelopment or maladjustment (discussed in the first search result) that causes the recidivist rate to be high.
Most of the blather spewed in response to my post does not actually address what I said. Whether or not the Supreme Court regards the lists as punishment is irrelevant. Being on a list is punishment. I didn't say the lists actually accomplish anything. And nothing I said implies that therapy would be effective. To the contrary, I believe therapy to be completely ineffective on most child molesters because they are "stuck" in an arrested form of development. I strongly believe that recidivist child molesters should be given every opportunity to end their tortured existence themselves in a contained environment. That said, I am against the death penalty and any form of viglantism.
Lastly, I am fully in favor of voting rights being restored to any convicted felon who has completed his "time." This topic is for another board. Being on a list related to commission of a crime that is public record is not comparable with losing one's inalienable right to vote.
The leap frog logic exhibited on these types of venues is why I lost interest in the Internet a long ago. The general public's inability to grasp nuance (as George Bush can't), the fanatical desire to win argument at all cost, to display radical "uni-thought" are displayed grotesquely on even the tamest message boards.
Most living things differentiate themselves from others in the same species by what they "have." A male bird has brighter feathers than other male birds, so he mates more. One lion has a bigger mane and more muscle than other male lions, so he mates more. With humans, it's a bit more complicated because muscle, penis, smarts or blue eyes are not quite as directly related to survival.
In the end, what you "have" shows how well you are able to survive. So what you have differentiates you from others.
Where is it stated in the law that "doing time" is the only form of punishment possible? The punishment must fit the crime. Because child molesters are notoriously recidivist, simple jail time doesn't fit their crime unless that jail time is a life sentence. It seems to me that registering and being on a few lists are light punishment in addition to jail time.
Red Hat passes on Microsoft extortion, then is sued by a Microsoft straw man. This is how Microsoft operates. They have the time and money to do what they like without significant impunity. Things will never change until the U.S. government breaks them up and forces them to open the API or until the computer business paradigm changes so dramatically, that they have no business. I wouldn't count on the latter any time soon.
Microsoft isn't going to sue anybody because Microsoft doesn't want to be caught in the middle of such a suit that would place them in the hairs of government antitrust prosecutors. Microsoft wants no attention. But we don't have to go very far back to find out what they are very willing and capable of doing. That is, find and finance a straw man patent owner (such as they did with SCO) to sue the pants off of every distribution that, coincidentally, doesn't have a deal with Microsoft. This will happen after they've given up their shake down. This whole thing isn't about patents. It's about rugged mafia type business tactics and money.
I'm the sysadmin/help desk guy for a large law firm. I use windows because all of my users use windows. I need to have what they are using to trouble shoot connectivity problems and user interface issues, for example. When someone calls me complaining about a desktop issue, I can't say, "Sorry, I can't remember how to do that in Windows." Or "Pretty strange problem. Go on!" I need to see the problem as they are seeing it in front of me. As it is now, I refuse to solve I.E issues anymore. I.E. has gotten too stupid. I tell them to use Firefox. At my last job I used Linux (Debian) for the desktop, and I really liked it, but I had no users to bother with. On the server side we use Linux primarily. I can't wait to get rid of this Windows cr@p again.
SME servers are actually bound to a private IP and NAT'd to a public address at the WAN router making TLS a no-go Hmm. I see. I had never heard of SME. Thanks for the tip. I'll check that out. But we have a similar set up. We use Exchange for the end users within the network and Linux gateways for public SMTP. What I am proposing is that the gateways speak TLS to each other. Not internal servers. The dencrypted email would be forwarded from the gateway to the internal server. Why not throw up a gateway server to do all your public SMTP? It's not expensive at all. Exim or Postfix will run on a PIII easily.
The spam problem arises from the free nature of email. It is free, so there are spammers. The object is to raise the cost to the spammer. Greylisting and certificates do just that. Granted they don't have much impact on "legitimate bulk mailers". But the fact is that most of those "legitimate bulk mailers" send spam to people who freely handed out their addresses. What I'm suggesting would impact low margin spammers which I believe to be the great percentage. Now if we raise the cost to spammers, sometimes we raise the cost for ourselves. Greylisting is a counter example to that. When I greylist I am not DOS'd. My CPU usage goes way down. Occasionaly a "legitimate bulk spammer" will hit me as you described. That's why I have a firewall. I shut the door on him.
Maybe what I suggest isn't "the answer." But it's works darn well. And might I add TLS would have the additional benefit of encrypting our mail which sadly is plain text today.
We implemented greylisting. It is the answer. Tens of thousands of emails per day are bounced by our servers away into oblivion. Server CPU is neglible. Let's not reinvent the wheel. Why don't we just build greylisting right into the SMTP protocol? Sure some spammers will resend, but at what cost. How many _can't_ resend?
Also I believe SMTP over TLS is the second part of the answer to the spam problem. It adds one more cost to the sender i.e. exchanging certificates and encrypting email. If you send out 2 million emails and have to exchange 1.5 million certificates then encrypt the email with the certificate you downloaded, well, I think you see the problem for the renegade spammer whose sending email over cheap DSL/dial-up links. We have HTTPS. Why not enforce SMTPS? I believe the protocol has already bveen established.
I bet as more and more OEMs install Linux on new PCs, and advertise it, Linux will pickup market share. Yes, you are correct. But then Linux becomes more and more of a "frozen meals."
I wouldn't say there's massive discontent among regular computer users,/.ers are another matter. Most consumers have been conditioned to be finnicky. They are used to being in control; they understand value; and they have no allegiance. Given this backdrop, and the generally crappy product Microsoft has supplied over the years pre-XP-SP2, I'd say "massive discontent" is accurate.
Let me understand. If my hardware is expensive, I don't mind spending a lot for the OS. If the hardware is cheap, it bothers me that the OS is still the same price as before to the point that I will forgo the OS and spent a lot of time learning a new OS. Sumpin wrong there.
First, I've worked in the IT world _A LONG_ time. I can tell you that Microsoft has always bothered most people for various reasons. The people who have a good understanding of legal issues know that Bill Gates and Company are crooks who flagrantly break the law. IT people understand that Microsoft in the past has produced a crappy product for a high price. They now see that Microsoft produces a decent product but charges a very high price (everything and the kitchen sink is licensed out the wazoo and IT budgets reflect that). Basic users hate Microsoft because they cannot understand how to use Windows and feel betrayed due to the virus/spyware problem. About the only people who like Microsoft are wealthier people who consider themselves "power users" and really use the OS and all the gadgets they can get their hands on.
Now despite this massive discontent, Microsoft continues to be used by all because it is easy. Windows is kinda like frozen food. It costs more than preparing it yourself, but you don't need a pantry full of spices and seasonings, requires no prep time, and in many cases tastes just as good (read Marie Callendar) as meals from scratch, and is certainly more reliably good than home prepared meals. I can't tell you how many meals I've botched.
So, and I've said this many times, Linux/BSD will only become a popular desktop when governments decide to enact/enforce monopoly laws and force Microsoft to fully publish APIs so _ALL_ software no matter the programming language is fully platform independent.
It seems to me that this Eula transfer restriction is similar in theory to the GPLx restrictions on what may be done with the software after downloading. Isn't each contract saying essentially: "You may use this software, but it's not really yours and so there are restrictions on what you may do with it."? This may be considered flamebait, but I think the comparison is valid.
Well, another problem should be that one would have to know Exchange-Outlook well enough to know what the users actually expect. Something which is especially unlikely for hardcore OSS people, i.e. those who'd be the most likely to write such a thing. I would think that an Exchange/Outlook replacement would be of far more interest to an Open Source programmer than KDE when Gnome already existed, and Open Office. My God! Who wants to spend time cloning Microsoft Office! I break out in hives whenever I have to even use it.
Having converted most of our servers to Linux from Novell/Microsoft, I can say with confidence that there are savings beyond just hardware, power, Microsoft software and server support hours. The real expense lies in the mindset between the two system architectures. In an open source environment, the goal is to do everything with free software. In a Microsoft environment, the propensity is to buy everything including all the maintenance agreements. _There's_ the killer cost: upgrade and maintenance agreements hold companies hostage to complicated licensing schemes. It's really highway robbery which can sink an IT dept. We have about 140 Microsoft desktops and 25 servers (17 Linux) across 4 offices. By far and away the cost of desktop swamps server by a _huge_ margin. It's pretty sad when a loaded laptop costs more than the server that supports it.
I think your point is good in theory. First you mention Unix tradition. How attractive is the Unix tradition for desktop. IMHO, not good. Unix desktop has very low market share and very limited feature set though it's been around since before Windows. Second, software integration as you describe only works well in a perfect world. In a complicated reality, when you throw things like SSL integration for example, kludging together all of these things becomes a system administrator's nightmare, even with great package management. Thirdly, developing the parts without a clear vision of the whole, to me, runs clearly counter to software development. The developer should start out defining the objective. If that objective involves many complications (such as for an email client) because people want many calendar functions integrated with email functions and contact functions, well what do we say? You can't have that because it's not good practice? Or do we say, "Hell yes, I'm working on it." The real problem with end user GUI open source code projects, such as an Exchange-Outlook replacement, is that the objective is so complicated resulting in lots of "boring" code that no one wants to really write for free. Even Zimbra which I hear is very good is mostly a kludge of existing software and it's expensive for the licensed version.
Linux would benefit greatly from the integration of existing software. What I am thinking primarily of is SMTP. IMAP, groupware, and mail clients. These need to be tightly integrated into TWO applications similar to Outlook and Exchange. I realize there are applications out there that appear to be this, but they are really kludges of existing applications. Don't misunderstand; I like Postfix and Exim, along with the rest of the apps, and we use them now on the gateways. But I would merge all of the code and add a ton of features. One of the first features would be wireless handheld bidirectional integration. Since I'm not a developer, I can't say how this could be done. But is at the top of my wish list. We use Exchange right now, only because of the wireless handheld Blackberry integration and easy contact and calendar. So I am waiting for this to happen
There needs to be integration of a database and a RAD front end similar to Access. Access is the only reason we continue to use Microsoft Office. We could easily switch to Open Office except that our business relies heavily on Access. We could easily switch given the opportunity, because the backend to our Access application is Mysql. So I am waiting for this to happen also.
Wish lists can are rants in disguise. But you asked.
Yes. It's the applications. The ones that only run on Windows -- like most of them. There are thousands of applications that will run only on Windows and these applications are citical to businesses. These apps are written and sold by large commercial vendors. Here are a few examples of areas where there's no real Linux counterpart but the Windows software is pervasive: Time and billing, document management, MS Access, and the list goes on into the thousands. Businesses use computers not because they need computers, but because they need the apps that make the business more efficient and 95% of all of those apps are Windows-only. If all businesses needed was Office, they'd switch to Linux. If someone were to develop a GPL Windows API emulator to run on Linux, I believe Linux would overtake Windows within 5 years. But such a thing is pipe dream unless governments were to wake up and enforce anti-monopolist laws and force MS to publish ALL of the APIs for free use.
Slashdot Mirror
Often unread posts were erroneously marked read. I appreciate that it was free, but I have some free dog poop in my backyard if you want want it.
I have never rebooted my WRT54G Linksys router since I got rid of my wireless landline phone. Sometimes the frequency used by those phones can interfere with the Linksys wireless. When I had one, I had to reboot very frequently. Also my router is powered through a UPS.
Microsoft's enemy is Google. It doesn't make sense to kill Google's enemy, Yahoo!, especially when Microsoft itself is having trouble competing.
I believe that Sun is capable of adding an enormous amount of value to the Mysql server in the way of advanced feature set. Imagine that Sun brings the Mysql server up to par with Oracle's product offering, but continues to charge the same amount. Where are sales going -- of both their hardware and Mysql? Sun is perfectly capable of some fairly stunning software advances. Look at ZFS and Dtrace. If they can pull this off, Mysql will be a big winner. The free version might not be a big winner though.
I have already invested in a company that plans to tap this hydrogen cloud for cheap alternative hydrogen fuel. :)
Obviously the first hurdle into this centralized environment will be a dramatic increase in bandwidth pipe everywhere (at a time when it seems that all future bandwidth will be soaked up by the music/video on demand businesses).
The second hurdle will be applications management. The computer utility companies will have to have every available software program ready for quick install, including the big names like Oracle. Recently when I looked in to outsourcing our Exchange servers I could find any hosting provider that could come near to our internal costs. Such a possibility will happen when Microsoft says it's time.
Microsoft is a rabidly competitive company. Their objective is to own computing from MP3 players to "big iron". They intend to kill all competition by both legal and illegal/unethical means. OSS is a competitor. So people involved in OSS need to understand that OSS is in Microsoft's cross-hairs in a big way.
The people who have the most vested in OSS, the developers, the companies, etc, need to understand this and react is a cohesive way in terms of both software development and marketing. Otherwise, OSS at worst may not survive, at best will continue (as it has for years) to be a second player esp. on the desktop and the small to medium business server market.
I don't know how long it took for you to find that flimsy article, but this turned up SECOND under a Google search http://ww2.ps-sp.gc.ca/publications/corrections/pdf/199670_e.pdf with search words "child molestation recidivism rate". The fact is that most of the offenders have permanent psychological underdevelopment or maladjustment (discussed in the first search result) that causes the recidivist rate to be high.
Most of the blather spewed in response to my post does not actually address what I said. Whether or not the Supreme Court regards the lists as punishment is irrelevant. Being on a list is punishment. I didn't say the lists actually accomplish anything. And nothing I said implies that therapy would be effective. To the contrary, I believe therapy to be completely ineffective on most child molesters because they are "stuck" in an arrested form of development. I strongly believe that recidivist child molesters should be given every opportunity to end their tortured existence themselves in a contained environment. That said, I am against the death penalty and any form of viglantism.
Lastly, I am fully in favor of voting rights being restored to any convicted felon who has completed his "time." This topic is for another board. Being on a list related to commission of a crime that is public record is not comparable with losing one's inalienable right to vote.
The leap frog logic exhibited on these types of venues is why I lost interest in the Internet a long ago. The general public's inability to grasp nuance (as George Bush can't), the fanatical desire to win argument at all cost, to display radical "uni-thought" are displayed grotesquely on even the tamest message boards.
This explains much of what you describe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspicuous_consumption
Most living things differentiate themselves from others in the same species by what they "have." A male bird has brighter feathers than other male birds, so he mates more. One lion has a bigger mane and more muscle than other male lions, so he mates more. With humans, it's a bit more complicated because muscle, penis, smarts or blue eyes are not quite as directly related to survival.
In the end, what you "have" shows how well you are able to survive. So what you have differentiates you from others.
Where is it stated in the law that "doing time" is the only form of punishment possible? The punishment must fit the crime. Because child molesters are notoriously recidivist, simple jail time doesn't fit their crime unless that jail time is a life sentence. It seems to me that registering and being on a few lists are light punishment in addition to jail time.
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=322261&cid=20911241
Red Hat passes on Microsoft extortion, then is sued by a Microsoft straw man. This is how Microsoft operates. They have the time and money to do what they like without significant impunity. Things will never change until the U.S. government breaks them up and forces them to open the API or until the computer business paradigm changes so dramatically, that they have no business. I wouldn't count on the latter any time soon.
------
I posted something that quickly fell.
Microsoft isn't going to sue anybody because Microsoft doesn't want to be caught in the middle of such a suit that would place them in the hairs of government antitrust prosecutors. Microsoft wants no attention. But we don't have to go very far back to find out what they are very willing and capable of doing. That is, find and finance a straw man patent owner (such as they did with SCO) to sue the pants off of every distribution that, coincidentally, doesn't have a deal with Microsoft. This will happen after they've given up their shake down. This whole thing isn't about patents. It's about rugged mafia type business tactics and money.
Now who could that straw man be? Any ideas?
I'm the sysadmin/help desk guy for a large law firm. I use windows because all of my users use windows. I need to have what they are using to trouble shoot connectivity problems and user interface issues, for example. When someone calls me complaining about a desktop issue, I can't say, "Sorry, I can't remember how to do that in Windows." Or "Pretty strange problem. Go on!" I need to see the problem as they are seeing it in front of me. As it is now, I refuse to solve I.E issues anymore. I.E. has gotten too stupid. I tell them to use Firefox. At my last job I used Linux (Debian) for the desktop, and I really liked it, but I had no users to bother with. On the server side we use Linux primarily. I can't wait to get rid of this Windows cr@p again.
The spam problem arises from the free nature of email. It is free, so there are spammers. The object is to raise the cost to the spammer. Greylisting and certificates do just that. Granted they don't have much impact on "legitimate bulk mailers". But the fact is that most of those "legitimate bulk mailers" send spam to people who freely handed out their addresses. What I'm suggesting would impact low margin spammers which I believe to be the great percentage. Now if we raise the cost to spammers, sometimes we raise the cost for ourselves. Greylisting is a counter example to that. When I greylist I am not DOS'd. My CPU usage goes way down. Occasionaly a "legitimate bulk spammer" will hit me as you described. That's why I have a firewall. I shut the door on him.
Maybe what I suggest isn't "the answer." But it's works darn well. And might I add TLS would have the additional benefit of encrypting our mail which sadly is plain text today.
We implemented greylisting. It is the answer. Tens of thousands of emails per day are bounced by our servers away into oblivion. Server CPU is neglible. Let's not reinvent the wheel. Why don't we just build greylisting right into the SMTP protocol? Sure some spammers will resend, but at what cost. How many _can't_ resend?
Also I believe SMTP over TLS is the second part of the answer to the spam problem. It adds one more cost to the sender i.e. exchanging certificates and encrypting email. If you send out 2 million emails and have to exchange 1.5 million certificates then encrypt the email with the certificate you downloaded, well, I think you see the problem for the renegade spammer whose sending email over cheap DSL/dial-up links. We have HTTPS. Why not enforce SMTPS? I believe the protocol has already bveen established.
Let me understand. If my hardware is expensive, I don't mind spending a lot for the OS. If the hardware is cheap, it bothers me that the OS is still the same price as before to the point that I will forgo the OS and spent a lot of time learning a new OS. Sumpin wrong there.
First, I've worked in the IT world _A LONG_ time. I can tell you that Microsoft has always bothered most people for various reasons. The people who have a good understanding of legal issues know that Bill Gates and Company are crooks who flagrantly break the law. IT people understand that Microsoft in the past has produced a crappy product for a high price. They now see that Microsoft produces a decent product but charges a very high price (everything and the kitchen sink is licensed out the wazoo and IT budgets reflect that). Basic users hate Microsoft because they cannot understand how to use Windows and feel betrayed due to the virus/spyware problem. About the only people who like Microsoft are wealthier people who consider themselves "power users" and really use the OS and all the gadgets they can get their hands on.
Now despite this massive discontent, Microsoft continues to be used by all because it is easy. Windows is kinda like frozen food. It costs more than preparing it yourself, but you don't need a pantry full of spices and seasonings, requires no prep time, and in many cases tastes just as good (read Marie Callendar) as meals from scratch, and is certainly more reliably good than home prepared meals. I can't tell you how many meals I've botched.
So, and I've said this many times, Linux/BSD will only become a popular desktop when governments decide to enact/enforce monopoly laws and force Microsoft to fully publish APIs so _ALL_ software no matter the programming language is fully platform independent.
The number matters to MS which has you exactly where it wants you -- forking over lots of $$s
It seems to me that this Eula transfer restriction is similar in theory to the GPLx restrictions on what may be done with the software after downloading. Isn't each contract saying essentially: "You may use this software, but it's not really yours and so there are restrictions on what you may do with it."? This may be considered flamebait, but I think the comparison is valid.
Having converted most of our servers to Linux from Novell/Microsoft, I can say with confidence that there are savings beyond just hardware, power, Microsoft software and server support hours. The real expense lies in the mindset between the two system architectures. In an open source environment, the goal is to do everything with free software. In a Microsoft environment, the propensity is to buy everything including all the maintenance agreements. _There's_ the killer cost: upgrade and maintenance agreements hold companies hostage to complicated licensing schemes. It's really highway robbery which can sink an IT dept. We have about 140 Microsoft desktops and 25 servers (17 Linux) across 4 offices. By far and away the cost of desktop swamps server by a _huge_ margin. It's pretty sad when a loaded laptop costs more than the server that supports it.
I think your point is good in theory. First you mention Unix tradition. How attractive is the Unix tradition for desktop. IMHO, not good. Unix desktop has very low market share and very limited feature set though it's been around since before Windows. Second, software integration as you describe only works well in a perfect world. In a complicated reality, when you throw things like SSL integration for example, kludging together all of these things becomes a system administrator's nightmare, even with great package management. Thirdly, developing the parts without a clear vision of the whole, to me, runs clearly counter to software development. The developer should start out defining the objective. If that objective involves many complications (such as for an email client) because people want many calendar functions integrated with email functions and contact functions, well what do we say? You can't have that because it's not good practice? Or do we say, "Hell yes, I'm working on it." The real problem with end user GUI open source code projects, such as an Exchange-Outlook replacement, is that the objective is so complicated resulting in lots of "boring" code that no one wants to really write for free. Even Zimbra which I hear is very good is mostly a kludge of existing software and it's expensive for the licensed version.
Linux would benefit greatly from the integration of existing software. What I am thinking primarily of is SMTP. IMAP, groupware, and mail clients. These need to be tightly integrated into TWO applications similar to Outlook and Exchange. I realize there are applications out there that appear to be this, but they are really kludges of existing applications. Don't misunderstand; I like Postfix and Exim, along with the rest of the apps, and we use them now on the gateways. But I would merge all of the code and add a ton of features. One of the first features would be wireless handheld bidirectional integration. Since I'm not a developer, I can't say how this could be done. But is at the top of my wish list. We use Exchange right now, only because of the wireless handheld Blackberry integration and easy contact and calendar. So I am waiting for this to happen
There needs to be integration of a database and a RAD front end similar to Access. Access is the only reason we continue to use Microsoft Office. We could easily switch to Open Office except that our business relies heavily on Access. We could easily switch given the opportunity, because the backend to our Access application is Mysql. So I am waiting for this to happen also.
Wish lists can are rants in disguise. But you asked.
Yes. It's the applications. The ones that only run on Windows -- like most of them. There are thousands of applications that will run only on Windows and these applications are citical to businesses. These apps are written and sold by large commercial vendors. Here are a few examples of areas where there's no real Linux counterpart but the Windows software is pervasive: Time and billing, document management, MS Access, and the list goes on into the thousands. Businesses use computers not because they need computers, but because they need the apps that make the business more efficient and 95% of all of those apps are Windows-only. If all businesses needed was Office, they'd switch to Linux. If someone were to develop a GPL Windows API emulator to run on Linux, I believe Linux would overtake Windows within 5 years. But such a thing is pipe dream unless governments were to wake up and enforce anti-monopolist laws and force MS to publish ALL of the APIs for free use.