I would take all that he says with a grain of salt. I walk into offices that have coax that has been around for many years (obviously, since nobody uses it anymore) and everything is working just fine.
I'll agree, as anyone who as been around for awhile knows, that a 10 base-2 network can be difficult to troubleshoot. But for small offices that have 2-5 workstations that have been working fine running the same app for years with no plans on changing, why rip it out and put in Cat5?
One observation that I have made that I'm not sure that many people would agree on is the stability of token ring networks. I was first introduced to networking on a very large token ring system with type 1 cable strung all over the place and closets full of MAU's. I don't know if it was the quality of the IBM 8228's or the purely massive shielded twisted pair type 1 cable, but they where incredibly stable and offered smooth bandwidth.
I still have one place that uses ARCnet to travel an incredible distance (2500+ feet, let's see ethernet do that over coax!). It's run underground between buildings through conduit and works like a charm.
My understanding is that an X terminal basically has to do one job... display an image. The actual processing takes place on a central server.
If my assumptions are true, it wouldn't really matter what application you where using. Sure, if everyone where doing some high end stuff all at once you might put a pretty heavy load on the server...
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. I'm not as well versed in this as I could be, I know.
The VUI will never take off in a business environment.
Can you imagine a room full of users sitting in their cubicals talking all at once to their computer all day long? Talk about annoying!
I can see it for control equipment, gaming, or as a personal novelty, but I just don't see it catching on. I don't see how it can. (and I'm not talking about technically)
That site is the funniest thing I've seen in a long time! It's great! I mean, what can you say about a guy who would put something like that up to mock his own film. He always said that the best way to keep people from ridiculing you was to do it yourself first.
To those of you who don't know, Kevin really supports his Internet fans. He regularly participates in the discussion forums on the View Askew website to keep us all up with whats going on. Not many directors (or public figures of any kind) would do that. He also kept a guy on the set the whole time J&SBSB was being filmed to create a weblog of everything that was going on.
He's even had special screenings and get togethers for the people who frequent his forums. Not to mention the Internet only trailers that he put together for us.
This is the only explanation that I see that could make a difference to me. I see how giving users a simple way to run a common complex query would be very helpfull.
Now help me understand. Say I'm writing custom web apps for people using Perl and mySQL. There is no ad-hoc reporting capability, etc. How does this benefit me?
I'm assuming your being sarcastic, but I actually prefer it this way. Maybe not the crude graphics, but the overhead puzzle view felt much better to me.
Call me old fashioned, but it was the kind of gaming that I liked. Too much emphasis is put on graphics these days.
1) Create a non-root user and add them to the wheel group
2) Disable ftp access to members of the wheel group
3) Disable ssh logins from root
3) Allow only members of the wheel group su privilages
No problem.
Except because of an INSANE (IMHO) argument from RMS, GNU su doesn't support the wheel group convention.
Why GNU su does not support the wheel group (by Richard Stallman)
Sometimes a few of the users try to hold total power over all the rest. For example, in 1984, a few users at the MIT AI lab decided to seize power by changing the operator password on the Twenex system and keeping it secret from everyone else. (I was able to thwart this coup and give power back to the users by patching the kernel, but I wouldn't know how to do that in Unix.)
However, occasionally the rulers do tell someone. Under the usual su mechanism, once someone learns the root password who sympathizes with the ordinary users, he can tell the rest. The "wheel group" feature would make this impossible, and thus cement the power of the rulers.
I'm on the side of the masses, not that of the rulers. If you are used to supporting the bosses and sysadmins in whatever they do, you might find this idea strange at first.
I guess you could always just chmod the su file so that only members of the wheel group could execute it...
So you do that in the deveopment tree, not the stable one.
It's crazy to have stable releases coming out as often as we do. There is no way that you could change enough in the kernel to justify a new stable release 2 weeks (or less) later unless it was a to fix a major oversight (read: bug) in the previous stable release. You just don't have time to test things out.
So I'm the head SA at megacorp, Inc. We take you up on your offer. We get hacked.
I go to the boss and explain that while we did hire some guy to watch over security, we ended up getting hacked, but he's going to pay us $10,000.
The PHB doesn't care about $10,000. Our company reputation is on the line. The $10,000 just means that the Fiscal Dept. has to waste time finding the forms to accept the check. He's mad at me because I trusted our network to "some guy" who he's never heard of.
Now change the scenerio.
So I'm the head SA at megacorp, Inc. We take HP up on their offer. We get hacked.
I go to the boss and explain that while we did enter into an agreement with HP to watch over security, we ended up getting hacked anyway.
The PHB, trusting the reputation of HP, explains that he is obviously disappointed that we had a problem, but understands that I did the best I could to try to prevent it.
And heck - if they fall to the ground, they'll prolly release the full code. Win-win for us, folks!
No, not win-win for us. It repulses me every time I hear someone say this. How short-sighted can you be? There can only be so many large companies that embrace Linux and fail before they all get the idea that it's just not worth it.
Want to support and promote Linux? Wish HP all the luck in the world pulling this off. By selling and supporting a distro like this, Linux may get a strong foothold inside corporate data centers. Now that's definately a win-win for us. With a substantial Linux corporate userbase we will see more industrial strength apps and tools being released for the platform we all love.
Do you want the Linux community to be viewed as nothing more than a bunch of scavengers? Vultures circling overhead just hoping that a great initiative will fail so we can scoop down and eat up the remains?
I think not.
Best of luck, HP! You've made a great decision in choosing to support Linux, and we all hope that it brings in loads of money for your company for many years to come.
No, no, no, and finally, no. I've worked with a couple of freenet projects. We took donated old PC hardware, fixed it up and provided it free of charge (along with a free account with an ISP) to people who just couldn't afford to pay.
Strange as it may seem to you, there are people who can't afford this who can read.
Some are old folks who use the Internet as a companion when nobody else is around. Others are inner-city and/or very rural kids whose parents are so screwed up that they can barely afford to keep the electricity on, much less provide connectivity.
The Internet to them can be a form of escape. Not only in the sense of a mental escape from their harsh reality, but in a physical escape from the poverty that surrounds them by utilizing the information that they then have access to via the 'net to make a better life for themselves.
No, not everyone who can read has ready access to a computer and the Internet. Not even close.
Say you didn't have access to a computer at home, or consitant use of any single computer at all, it would start to make a little more sense.
The whole idea, as I see it, is that you get their equivilent of a "web folder" where you can store all of your files. Working on your resume? A school project? Learning for learning's sake? You can go to any place that has an Internet connection and have access to your word processing application and files.
No pesky disk problems or anything else to worry about. (with the possible exception of crackers, Government snooping/eavesdropping, project failure/lack of funding resulting in lost documents, etc.)
Sounds to me like your old school district needed to find a new systems administrator. Things like locking down a background, screen saver, colors, etc. are trivial in Windows and have been for many years.
I like the idea of using Linux and being able to deal with a few text files to get configurations back, but don't go spreading misinformation about Windows. It doesn't help anyone, and in fact just makes us look like a bunch of people complaining about nothing because we don't bother to find out the correct way to implement something.
I thought that the story was very well written, and I came away having learned a couple of things that I wasn't already aware of. The author seemed very knowledgable on his subject, and had obviously done a considerable amount of research from viewing his endnotes.
Maybe he threw that caveman bit in to make the article a bit lighter. Maybe get the attention of someone who might not otherwise give it a second glance.
So is choice in which desktop environment a good thing or a bad thing? At least according to this guy, it's not exactly in the same league as sliced bread.
While X was a well-written and easily handled GUI, it never settled on a particular "look and feel," and as a result at least three different X interfaces floated around; this was probably not the main reason why X never caught on much outside the UNIX community, but certainly was part of the explanation. X is still a viable graphical environment today, and has a relatively small but vocal following.
So what are we to make of this? Is this history repeating itself? I'm torn, personally. While I think choice is great (and needed), a common "default" interface, libraries, and inter-application messaging system sure would make X Window a lot simpler for the average person to adopt.
This is interesting? Maybe you think it's interesting if we find out that this guy either has no clue as to figure out what is causing his problems, but I sure dont. Or maybe you find it interesting because you agree with him (?) politicaly?
I'd guess he's got some hardware issue going on. IE5x is rock solid. It renders beautifully, and is super fast.
Don't get me wrong, I use Linux on the servers that I administer and do my development on, but when it comes to my box it's W2K all the way. I've tried to use Linux on my desktop, but I believe that you should use the right tool for the job.
I typically have several IE windows open and about 6 SecureCRT sessions going. That's how I do my work. My clients view the fruits of my labor in IE, so I have to design for it.
Besides, all the Linux browsers do a HORRIBLE job rendering text. It's either so small that you can barely read it or it's just big and clunky. And don't even get me started on the screen "flashes" as you scroll down a page. Ugh.
I know that I will never again purchase anything from X10. It's a shame too, because I have almost my entire house fit with X10 devices.
I've emailed them to voice my opion on their intrusive pop up windows, but got no reply. I know you can go to their site and they will set a cookie to disable the ads for a month, but that's just ridiculous.
I guess you kind of expect this behaviour from porn sites or other disreputable vendors, but X10 is (was) cool.
Is this the right thing to do? The way I look at it is that the sites I frequent, such as/. and many other smaller, more needier sites, depend on me viewing their ads each time I load a page. This is how they generate money. This is how they stay alive so I can enjoy them.
If I don't allow an image to load, they don't get credit for me loading that page.
Sure, I know all the tricks to stop ad banners, and I do for some really annoying ones (ie., x10) but it just doesn't feel right to me. Who cares if there is an ad banner at the top of the page? I waste more bandwidth downloading a crappy mp3 that I immediately delete than I waste on banner ads in a week.
I even make sure I click-thru every now and then if I see something interesting. Ad impressions aren't what they used to be.
Don't get me wrong, I'm totally opposed to programs like this that change the intended content of a page without the owners permission. But I think I'll bear with the legitimate ads.
Slashdot Mirror
I would take all that he says with a grain of salt. I walk into offices that have coax that has been around for many years (obviously, since nobody uses it anymore) and everything is working just fine.
I'll agree, as anyone who as been around for awhile knows, that a 10 base-2 network can be difficult to troubleshoot. But for small offices that have 2-5 workstations that have been working fine running the same app for years with no plans on changing, why rip it out and put in Cat5?
One observation that I have made that I'm not sure that many people would agree on is the stability of token ring networks. I was first introduced to networking on a very large token ring system with type 1 cable strung all over the place and closets full of MAU's. I don't know if it was the quality of the IBM 8228's or the purely massive shielded twisted pair type 1 cable, but they where incredibly stable and offered smooth bandwidth.
I still have one place that uses ARCnet to travel an incredible distance (2500+ feet, let's see ethernet do that over coax!). It's run underground between buildings through conduit and works like a charm.
My understanding is that an X terminal basically has to do one job... display an image. The actual processing takes place on a central server.
If my assumptions are true, it wouldn't really matter what application you where using. Sure, if everyone where doing some high end stuff all at once you might put a pretty heavy load on the server...
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. I'm not as well versed in this as I could be, I know.
The VUI will never take off in a business environment.
Can you imagine a room full of users sitting in their cubicals talking all at once to their computer all day long? Talk about annoying!
I can see it for control equipment, gaming, or as a personal novelty, but I just don't see it catching on. I don't see how it can. (and I'm not talking about technically)
That site is the funniest thing I've seen in a long time! It's great! I mean, what can you say about a guy who would put something like that up to mock his own film. He always said that the best way to keep people from ridiculing you was to do it yourself first.
To those of you who don't know, Kevin really supports his Internet fans. He regularly participates in the discussion forums on the View Askew website to keep us all up with whats going on. Not many directors (or public figures of any kind) would do that. He also kept a guy on the set the whole time J&SBSB was being filmed to create a weblog of everything that was going on.
He's even had special screenings and get togethers for the people who frequent his forums. Not to mention the Internet only trailers that he put together for us.
That's just pretty cool in my book.
And sex! Don't forget all the sex!
Could Linux having sex result in a bunch of little Linuxii running around? AHH, forks!
The real question is, who will he mate with?
and the picture of Tux that apparently didn't have the transparency mask set correctly. (or did they intend to use that horrible background color?)
This is the only explanation that I see that could make a difference to me. I see how giving users a simple way to run a common complex query would be very helpfull.
Now help me understand. Say I'm writing custom web apps for people using Perl and mySQL. There is no ad-hoc reporting capability, etc. How does this benefit me?
Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
I'm assuming your being sarcastic, but I actually prefer it this way. Maybe not the crude graphics, but the overhead puzzle view felt much better to me.
Call me old fashioned, but it was the kind of gaming that I liked. Too much emphasis is put on graphics these days.
When you're the only broadband option in town (which is the case in very many places) you can afford to step on a few toes.
It's not quite as easy as most people here think. Apparently you all live in places that have 4 or 5 cable companies and quite a few DSL providors.
If I lost my cable access, it'd be 56k all the way for me!
1) Create a non-root user and add them to the wheel group
2) Disable ftp access to members of the wheel group
3) Disable ssh logins from root
3) Allow only members of the wheel group su privilages
No problem.
Except because of an INSANE (IMHO) argument from RMS, GNU su doesn't support the wheel group convention.
I guess you could always just chmod the su file so that only members of the wheel group could execute it...
So you do that in the deveopment tree, not the stable one.
It's crazy to have stable releases coming out as often as we do. There is no way that you could change enough in the kernel to justify a new stable release 2 weeks (or less) later unless it was a to fix a major oversight (read: bug) in the previous stable release. You just don't have time to test things out.
So I'm the head SA at megacorp, Inc. We take you up on your offer. We get hacked.
I go to the boss and explain that while we did hire some guy to watch over security, we ended up getting hacked, but he's going to pay us $10,000.
The PHB doesn't care about $10,000. Our company reputation is on the line. The $10,000 just means that the Fiscal Dept. has to waste time finding the forms to accept the check. He's mad at me because I trusted our network to "some guy" who he's never heard of.
Now change the scenerio.
So I'm the head SA at megacorp, Inc. We take HP up on their offer. We get hacked.
I go to the boss and explain that while we did enter into an agreement with HP to watch over security, we ended up getting hacked anyway.
The PHB, trusting the reputation of HP, explains that he is obviously disappointed that we had a problem, but understands that I did the best I could to try to prevent it.
And heck - if they fall to the ground, they'll prolly release the full code. Win-win for us, folks!
No, not win-win for us. It repulses me every time I hear someone say this. How short-sighted can you be? There can only be so many large companies that embrace Linux and fail before they all get the idea that it's just not worth it.
Want to support and promote Linux? Wish HP all the luck in the world pulling this off. By selling and supporting a distro like this, Linux may get a strong foothold inside corporate data centers. Now that's definately a win-win for us. With a substantial Linux corporate userbase we will see more industrial strength apps and tools being released for the platform we all love.
Do you want the Linux community to be viewed as nothing more than a bunch of scavengers? Vultures circling overhead just hoping that a great initiative will fail so we can scoop down and eat up the remains?
I think not.
Best of luck, HP! You've made a great decision in choosing to support Linux, and we all hope that it brings in loads of money for your company for many years to come.
Show me one case where a company has successfully sued an OS maker after an intrusion.
What about the innocent kids of the lazy and ingorant?
FreePC
eMachines
Doh! Nevermind.
No, no, no, and finally, no. I've worked with a couple of freenet projects. We took donated old PC hardware, fixed it up and provided it free of charge (along with a free account with an ISP) to people who just couldn't afford to pay.
Strange as it may seem to you, there are people who can't afford this who can read.
Some are old folks who use the Internet as a companion when nobody else is around. Others are inner-city and/or very rural kids whose parents are so screwed up that they can barely afford to keep the electricity on, much less provide connectivity.
The Internet to them can be a form of escape. Not only in the sense of a mental escape from their harsh reality, but in a physical escape from the poverty that surrounds them by utilizing the information that they then have access to via the 'net to make a better life for themselves.
No, not everyone who can read has ready access to a computer and the Internet. Not even close.
Say you didn't have access to a computer at home, or consitant use of any single computer at all, it would start to make a little more sense.
The whole idea, as I see it, is that you get their equivilent of a "web folder" where you can store all of your files. Working on your resume? A school project? Learning for learning's sake? You can go to any place that has an Internet connection and have access to your word processing application and files.
No pesky disk problems or anything else to worry about. (with the possible exception of crackers, Government snooping/eavesdropping, project failure/lack of funding resulting in lost documents, etc.)
Sounds to me like your old school district needed to find a new systems administrator. Things like locking down a background, screen saver, colors, etc. are trivial in Windows and have been for many years.
I like the idea of using Linux and being able to deal with a few text files to get configurations back, but don't go spreading misinformation about Windows. It doesn't help anyone, and in fact just makes us look like a bunch of people complaining about nothing because we don't bother to find out the correct way to implement something.
I thought that the story was very well written, and I came away having learned a couple of things that I wasn't already aware of. The author seemed very knowledgable on his subject, and had obviously done a considerable amount of research from viewing his endnotes.
Maybe he threw that caveman bit in to make the article a bit lighter. Maybe get the attention of someone who might not otherwise give it a second glance.
So is choice in which desktop environment a good thing or a bad thing? At least according to this guy, it's not exactly in the same league as sliced bread.
While X was a well-written and easily handled GUI, it never settled on a particular "look and feel," and as a result at least three different X interfaces floated around; this was probably not the main reason why X never caught on much outside the UNIX community, but certainly was part of the explanation. X is still a viable graphical environment today, and has a relatively small but vocal following.
So what are we to make of this? Is this history repeating itself? I'm torn, personally. While I think choice is great (and needed), a common "default" interface, libraries, and inter-application messaging system sure would make X Window a lot simpler for the average person to adopt.
I say Linux because I don't know how to say GNU.
"I pronounce GNU, GNU"
So where's the GNU.au?
This is interesting? Maybe you think it's interesting if we find out that this guy either has no clue as to figure out what is causing his problems, but I sure dont. Or maybe you find it interesting because you agree with him (?) politicaly?
I'd guess he's got some hardware issue going on. IE5x is rock solid. It renders beautifully, and is super fast.
Don't get me wrong, I use Linux on the servers that I administer and do my development on, but when it comes to my box it's W2K all the way. I've tried to use Linux on my desktop, but I believe that you should use the right tool for the job.
I typically have several IE windows open and about 6 SecureCRT sessions going. That's how I do my work. My clients view the fruits of my labor in IE, so I have to design for it.
Besides, all the Linux browsers do a HORRIBLE job rendering text. It's either so small that you can barely read it or it's just big and clunky. And don't even get me started on the screen "flashes" as you scroll down a page. Ugh.
I know that I will never again purchase anything from X10. It's a shame too, because I have almost my entire house fit with X10 devices.
I've emailed them to voice my opion on their intrusive pop up windows, but got no reply. I know you can go to their site and they will set a cookie to disable the ads for a month, but that's just ridiculous.
I guess you kind of expect this behaviour from porn sites or other disreputable vendors, but X10 is (was) cool.
Is this the right thing to do? The way I look at it is that the sites I frequent, such as /. and many other smaller, more needier sites, depend on me viewing their ads each time I load a page. This is how they generate money. This is how they stay alive so I can enjoy them.
If I don't allow an image to load, they don't get credit for me loading that page.
Sure, I know all the tricks to stop ad banners, and I do for some really annoying ones (ie., x10) but it just doesn't feel right to me. Who cares if there is an ad banner at the top of the page? I waste more bandwidth downloading a crappy mp3 that I immediately delete than I waste on banner ads in a week.
I even make sure I click-thru every now and then if I see something interesting. Ad impressions aren't what they used to be.
Don't get me wrong, I'm totally opposed to programs like this that change the intended content of a page without the owners permission. But I think I'll bear with the legitimate ads.