The original post mentioned flash and java, that is what I replied to. and Java does not work in IE out of the box as of IE6/WinXP. WinXP has no java installed by default because MS was denied the ability to distribute Java, unless they license directly from Sun and they chose not to, causing all of their customers to do a 10MB+ download to get java working in IE.
Unfortunately your logic fails in that Using windows for that many years does not give you purely *windows-centric* knowledge, much of that knowledge is general computer knowledge.
I have been using Linux for only 1 year after using windows very heavily since windows 3.1, and I would say I am more proficient at linux admin than windows after just that year.
Why? Because alot of windows admin stuff is really just knowledge about computers and how they work, applying that knowledge to linux/unix/macos/any platform is simple and trivial. Sure there are things that are different about Linux, or MacOS or whatever, and it takes a little while to learn it, but switching from Windows to Linux is not switching from being a programmer to being a nude model. In other words, you don't throw out an entire toolset and start over fresh (I would have to do alot of working out if I wanted to make that switch, not to mention some plastic surgery, and other enhancements, and all my programming languages would be useless), you can take alot of things from windows and they translate directly into linux, and the things that don't I've found generally are easier to do in linux... So, no you don't have to throw away thousands of hours to switch to linux, just the hundreds you spent saying "Why the hell did they do it like this??!!"
While true that for people who are not computer saavy Lindows may be too close to Windows, for me Lindows is Lin(ux)dows, the LIN is different because to me it connotes a different meaning than WIN. I suspect the same to be true for most people who know what linux is, but it might just be me.. who knows. Point being in my mind, there is a 3 letter difference, not a 1 letter difference, and I think at that point its ridiculous to even say its close to the same name.
This phenomena was actually wildly expected among thinking people everywhere. Especially in the math community. My higher math teacher in high school was predicting this 10 years ago... (pre-calc/calc is what he taught), He never let us use calculators for anything, because technology abstracts the basic ideas away, and that is what you need, the basics, then you can build anything once you have those down. He also taught CS classes, basic and pascal, I see it even in the technology sector today, especially in most CS curricula in college that I've seen. They teach purely high level languages that abstract away all CPU/register issues, and so, the students get a dumbed down education not really understanding the way the registers work, how the memory works, how the cpu actually talks to these things, and therefore they write bloated code, because they don't see that there is a more efficient way at a lower level, because that lower level is abstracted away. Bottom line is kids are lazy, if you give them a nice graphing calculator, or a computer that has a nice graphing program, they will never learn pre-calc or calc, because they don't have to, they just type the equation into the program and it spits out the answer... unfortunately when they go to take standarized tests, they can't pass, cause they are now dependent on the technology, in essence they don't know anything, they've become mindless monkeys who know how to type equations into digital devices...
To fix the problem?? No more calculators in math classes period, bring back the slide rules (my understanding of logarythms is severly lacking because I never had to use one... see I can't even spell it right)...
just my.02
Re:One person's experience with PHP ...
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Right I understand that windows is difficult to secure, and I know its a design failure, but its the design of the technology... hence the technology is poorly designed, and therefore, bad, broken, fallable... Anyway, personally I think nimda is a really nice virus, I watched it once eat up a whole 200 seat win2k network... took about 3 minutes... I'm glad I wasn't the admin cleaning that up... but anyway, I see your point, and I've developed alot of PHP/Apache/MySQL websites, and I've never seen anything like what you described... so YMMV and off we go.
of course it still works. in fact you don't even need the cdrom, redhat has boot floppies that will boot and allow you to read iso images from across the network, or on the local hard drive.
I wasn't commenting on whether or not people are/are not going to have sex.. I'm well aware that people are going to do whatever the hell they feel like, in general... I'm not saying condoms are bad, nor that we shouldn't talk about them/teach kids about them, I'm simply stating the science on the site is accurate, condoms aren't 100% reliable, that is the truth, they are nearly 100% reliable sure, but with things like AIDS and pregnancy, that 1 or 2% of the time that condoms don't work... well thats a big risk to be taking, even if its only 1/100 that you'll get screwed...
I can see how the abortion/breast cancer issue is blatant suppression of scientific evidence, however, reading the article the information about condom use seems very accurate to me, and very similar to the information I was taught in middle/high school sex education, condoms work alot of the time, but the only truly sure way to stay safe is abstinence, or monogamy... not that most of the slashdot crowd should care eh? I mean really a post about sex on a geek website, not having to do with pr0n... come on guys... really..
Re:One person's experience with PHP ...
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ROFLMAO being cracked by NIMDA isn't considered a basic technology failure??? WTF Thats the funniest thing I've heard ever.
I speak and read spanish rather fluently, these were CD-R's The government agency APDIF (the association protecting the intellectual property of musical recordings) raided this company, the company says its illegal because they aren't doing anything wrong, the APDIF is using statistics similar to those used by the RIAA to substanciate their claims that Mekong is aiding the piracy industry ( leaving out all legal uses of CD-R's including data, and other legal uses), Mekong suspects that the APDIF has bribed government officials, or is in some other way in bed with them, and they are specifically attacking Mekong, the article states that there are at least 50 other CD-R importers none of which have been hassled at all, while Mekong has been interferred with 10 times in the last year.
Um, Java doesn't work out of the box in IE either, you have to download the pluggin... Same with Flash, the installations in linux are a little more involved, but there are simple instructions laid out, the flash installation is particularly easy, for the last 6 months + whenever I try to go to a site that uses flash on a box that doesn't have it, I click the link, it takes me to the right page, I download the file, and copy it to the directory it says to copy it to on the macromedia site.
One of the first rules of economics and business decisions: IGNORE SUNK COSTS. IE. the money they have already spent means dick. If its not worth it going forward, they will abondon ship right now.
The article stated that the company made an estimated 70 million last year, I'm sorry but that is a whole hell of a lot of money, and I'm quite certain at least the decision makers over at google are all easily millionaires, they have very little need for more money.
A co-worker of mine experienced this first hand, he was a network admin at Ford Motor Company, and one day Microsoft invited the whole IT department, and CIO, CTO of Ford out to Seattle. (They used all *nix servers for email/web serving). They had a couple meetings expounding the greatness of win2k server, and then it was to the bars/strippers for the whole weekend, all on MS's tab, along with the 1000/night hotel room for each person... and guess what?? The next month, moved all their servers over to MS... of course the number of servers they needed went for 10 to 150, and the number of IT personnel they needed more than quadrupled... but hey, it was a fun weekend!
It is not outside my skillset, I've taken apart and put back together many laptops (and yes they still worked afterwards), the problem is No-one sells laptop parts the way they do desktop systems. Show me a site that sells a decent looking laptop case, and a mobo that fits in it, and a touchpad mouse... I have a broken laptop right now, its just a little power adapter card thats gone bad, but can I get it fixed?? No, no one on the planet manufactures that card anymore, and there aren't any anywhere... completely unlike any desktop system where every part is replacable.
Bullshit. If someone steals my unlocked car and then decides to run over 50 people I'm responsible? If I buy a hammer, and I leave it on my porch, and someone comes and takes it and kills my neighbors, I'm responsible?? Your logic is so faulty, hell I couldn't even strain spaghetti with it, the spaghetti would fall right through the holes.
This is a good idea. I opened my wireless net last week doing some testing, and I was tired of typing in the key, so I turned off the encryption... now I guess I don't have any reason to turn it back on (the encryption that is) Open, dhcp, full access 1mbps up and down.:) have fun!
In what other industry is the manufacturer responsible for disposal of the things it makes??? Cars?? No... tires?? no... car batteries?? no... I can't think of a single one, and all of the above there have hazardous materials in them... why is the pc industry being made to do this??? Obviously its just a push by hp to get all of the small computer makers out of the market, because hp/dell can handle having to pay a charge to recycle computers, hell they could open their own recycling plants, but all the little white box makers will be forced out of business because we don't have the capital or cash flow to handle this type of overhead.
what white box manufacturer is dell undercutting by $200??? Some crappy white box makers you know. I undercut dell by 4-500 and I use better parts. of course this legislation will put me out of business so thats sad for my clients, as I could never afford to recycle the boxen I sell... oh well
I simply have to disagree with your assertion that 1 windows admin can admin as many windows servers as 1 linux admin. I worked in an all microsoft shop, and we had 1 admin/server there (which was a bit of overkill.), plus another 5 admins for the workstations. Now, I own my own business and I maintain 3 windows servers, and 20 linux servers, but I spend 90% of my time working on the windows servers (exchange is an evil beast). The linux servers just crank along, and basically except for upgrading software (with a simple up2date -u), I never touch them. In short, I think I could reasonably manage about 5 or 6 windows servers, and probably close to 100 linux servers...
lol. good point. unfortunately my clients don't have that option (I run linux and OS X everywhere on my machines, but lots of my clients are dependent on windows... sad but true...) I don't really mind the viruses actually, more money for me... but hey whatever.
I installed Linux on my brothers computer, he's in 9th grade. He used to call me at least once every couple weeks with problems in windows, now he's been running linux for 2 months, and hasn't booted into windows once (I set it up dual boot), also, he hasn't called me for help on anything, I told him to play with it to get to know where stuff was, and to not worry about breaking it because I didn't think he could, sure enough, I came home today to visit, he's got new programs installed, custom wallpaper, a different screensaver, all tweaked out and personalized, and suprise suprise, he didn't break it. I think Linux really invites kids to explore/mess with their computers, much more than windows does, and this is a good thing.
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The original post mentioned flash and java, that is what I replied to. and Java does not work in IE out of the box as of IE6/WinXP. WinXP has no java installed by default because MS was denied the ability to distribute Java, unless they license directly from Sun and they chose not to, causing all of their customers to do a 10MB+ download to get java working in IE.
Unfortunately your logic fails in that Using windows for that many years does not give you purely *windows-centric* knowledge, much of that knowledge is general computer knowledge.
I have been using Linux for only 1 year after using windows very heavily since windows 3.1, and I would say I am more proficient at linux admin than windows after just that year.
Why? Because alot of windows admin stuff is really just knowledge about computers and how they work, applying that knowledge to linux/unix/macos/any platform is simple and trivial. Sure there are things that are different about Linux, or MacOS or whatever, and it takes a little while to learn it, but switching from Windows to Linux is not switching from being a programmer to being a nude model. In other words, you don't throw out an entire toolset and start over fresh (I would have to do alot of working out if I wanted to make that switch, not to mention some plastic surgery, and other enhancements, and all my programming languages would be useless), you can take alot of things from windows and they translate directly into linux, and the things that don't I've found generally are easier to do in linux... So, no you don't have to throw away thousands of hours to switch to linux, just the hundreds you spent saying "Why the hell did they do it like this??!!"
While true that for people who are not computer saavy Lindows may be too close to Windows,
for me Lindows is Lin(ux)dows, the LIN is different because to me it connotes a different meaning than WIN. I suspect the same to be true for most people who know what linux is, but it might just be me.. who knows. Point being in my mind, there is a 3 letter difference, not a 1 letter difference, and I think at that point its ridiculous to even say its close to the same name.
This phenomena was actually wildly expected among thinking people everywhere. Especially in the math community. My higher math teacher in high school was predicting this 10 years ago... (pre-calc/calc is what he taught), He never let us use calculators for anything, because technology abstracts the basic ideas away, and that is what you need, the basics, then you can build anything once you have those down. He also taught CS classes, basic and pascal, I see it even in the technology sector today, especially in most CS curricula in college that I've seen. They teach purely high level languages that abstract away all CPU/register issues, and so, the students get a dumbed down education not really understanding the way the registers work, how the memory works, how the cpu actually talks to these things, and therefore they write bloated code, because they don't see that there is a more efficient way at a lower level, because that lower level is abstracted away. Bottom line is kids are lazy, if you give them a nice graphing calculator, or a computer that has a nice graphing program, they will never learn pre-calc or calc, because they don't have to, they just type the equation into the program and it spits out the answer... unfortunately when they go to take standarized tests, they can't pass, cause they are now dependent on the technology, in essence they don't know anything, they've become mindless monkeys who know how to type equations into digital devices...
.02
To fix the problem?? No more calculators in math classes period, bring back the slide rules (my understanding of logarythms is severly lacking because I never had to use one... see I can't even spell it right)...
just my
Right I understand that windows is difficult to secure, and I know its a design failure, but its the design of the technology... hence the technology is poorly designed, and therefore, bad, broken, fallable... Anyway, personally I think nimda is a really nice virus, I watched it once eat up a whole 200 seat win2k network... took about 3 minutes... I'm glad I wasn't the admin cleaning that up... but anyway, I see your point, and I've developed alot of PHP/Apache/MySQL websites, and I've never seen anything like what you described... so YMMV and off we go.
of course it still works.
in fact you don't even need the cdrom, redhat has boot floppies that will boot and allow you to read iso images from across the network, or on the local hard drive.
I wasn't commenting on whether or not people are/are not going to have sex.. I'm well aware that people are going to do whatever the hell they feel like, in general... I'm not saying condoms are bad, nor that we shouldn't talk about them/teach kids about them, I'm simply stating the science on the site is accurate, condoms aren't 100% reliable, that is the truth, they are nearly 100% reliable sure, but with things like AIDS and pregnancy, that 1 or 2% of the time that condoms don't work... well thats a big risk to be taking, even if its only 1/100 that you'll get screwed...
I can see how the abortion/breast cancer issue is blatant suppression of scientific evidence,
however, reading the article the information about condom use seems very accurate to me, and very similar to the information I was taught in middle/high school sex education, condoms work alot of the time, but the only truly sure way to stay safe is abstinence, or monogamy...
not that most of the slashdot crowd should care eh?
I mean really a post about sex on a geek website, not having to do with pr0n... come on guys... really..
ROFLMAO
being cracked by NIMDA isn't considered a basic technology failure??? WTF
Thats the funniest thing I've heard ever.
correction, the agency PGR raided the company,
apparently at the behest of APDIF
sorry for that.
I speak and read spanish rather fluently,
these were CD-R's
The government agency APDIF (the association protecting the intellectual property of musical recordings) raided this company,
the company says its illegal because they aren't doing anything wrong, the APDIF is using statistics similar to those used by the RIAA to substanciate their claims that Mekong is aiding the piracy industry ( leaving out all legal uses of CD-R's including data, and other legal uses), Mekong suspects that the APDIF has bribed government officials, or is in some other way in bed with them, and they are specifically attacking Mekong, the article states that there are at least 50 other CD-R importers none of which have been hassled at all, while Mekong has been interferred with 10 times in the last year.
Um,
Java doesn't work out of the box in IE either, you have to download the pluggin...
Same with Flash,
the installations in linux are a little more involved, but there are simple instructions laid out, the flash installation is particularly easy, for the last 6 months + whenever I try to go to a site that uses flash on a box that doesn't have it, I click the link, it takes me to the right page, I download the file, and copy it to the directory it says to copy it to on the macromedia site.
One of the first rules of economics and business decisions:
IGNORE SUNK COSTS.
IE. the money they have already spent means dick. If its not worth it going forward, they will abondon ship right now.
The article stated that the company made an estimated 70 million last year, I'm sorry but that is a whole hell of a lot of money, and I'm quite certain at least the decision makers over at google are all easily millionaires, they have very little need for more money.
A co-worker of mine experienced this first hand,
he was a network admin at Ford Motor Company,
and one day Microsoft invited the whole IT department, and CIO, CTO of Ford out to Seattle. (They used all *nix servers for email/web serving). They had a couple meetings expounding the greatness of win2k server, and then it was to the bars/strippers for the whole weekend, all on MS's tab, along with the 1000/night hotel room for each person... and guess what?? The next month, moved all their servers over to MS... of course the number of servers they needed went for 10 to 150, and the number of IT personnel they needed more than quadrupled... but hey, it was a fun weekend!
It is not outside my skillset,
I've taken apart and put back together many laptops (and yes they still worked afterwards),
the problem is No-one sells laptop parts the way they do desktop systems. Show me a site that sells a decent looking laptop case, and a mobo that fits in it, and a touchpad mouse... I have a broken laptop right now, its just a little power adapter card thats gone bad, but can I get it fixed?? No, no one on the planet manufactures that card anymore, and there aren't any anywhere... completely unlike any desktop system where every part is replacable.
laptops are a different story
the poster refered specifically to a laptop.
Bullshit.
If someone steals my unlocked car and then decides to run over 50 people I'm responsible?
If I buy a hammer, and I leave it on my porch, and someone comes and takes it and kills my neighbors, I'm responsible??
Your logic is so faulty, hell I couldn't even strain spaghetti with it, the spaghetti would fall right through the holes.
This is a good idea. :)
I opened my wireless net last week doing some testing, and I was tired of typing in the key, so I turned off the encryption... now I guess I don't have any reason to turn it back on (the encryption that is) Open, dhcp, full access 1mbps up and down.
have fun!
In what other industry is the manufacturer responsible for disposal of the things it makes???
Cars?? No... tires?? no... car batteries?? no... I can't think of a single one, and all of the above there have hazardous materials in them... why is the pc industry being made to do this??? Obviously its just a push by hp to get all of the small computer makers out of the market, because hp/dell can handle having to pay a charge to recycle computers, hell they could open their own recycling plants, but all the little white box makers will be forced out of business because we don't have the capital or cash flow to handle this type of overhead.
what white box manufacturer is dell undercutting by $200??? Some crappy white box makers you know.
I undercut dell by 4-500 and I use better parts.
of course this legislation will put me out of business so thats sad for my clients, as I could never afford to recycle the boxen I sell...
oh well
I simply have to disagree with your assertion that 1 windows admin can admin as many windows servers as 1 linux admin. I worked in an all microsoft shop, and we had 1 admin/server there (which was a bit of overkill.), plus another 5 admins for the workstations. Now, I own my own business and I maintain 3 windows servers, and 20 linux servers, but I spend 90% of my time working on the windows servers (exchange is an evil beast). The linux servers just crank along, and basically except for upgrading software (with a simple up2date -u), I never touch them. In short, I think I could reasonably manage about 5 or 6 windows servers, and probably close to 100 linux servers...
lol. good point.
unfortunately my clients don't have that option (I run linux and OS X everywhere on my machines, but lots of my clients are dependent on windows... sad but true...) I don't really mind the viruses actually, more money for me... but hey whatever.
Its still faster than reinstalling/reconfiguring windows after the virus reformats your hard drive.
I installed Linux on my brothers computer,
he's in 9th grade. He used to call me at least once every couple weeks with problems in windows, now he's been running linux for 2 months, and hasn't booted into windows once (I set it up dual boot), also, he hasn't called me for help on anything, I told him to play with it to get to know where stuff was, and to not worry about breaking it because I didn't think he could, sure enough, I came home today to visit, he's got new programs installed, custom wallpaper, a different screensaver, all tweaked out and personalized, and suprise suprise, he didn't break it. I think Linux really invites kids to explore/mess with their computers, much more than windows does, and this is a good thing.