A similar wierd thing happened to me one time. I have a home network with a linux machine as a gateway and a few other machines running various OS's. Anyway I was sitting thier working on some code. I look up and my modem is blinking away as if I am downloading something, though I wasn't intentionally doing this. I telneted over to my gateway and did a `netstat -M`, and I see my windows box is connected to an FTP site and is downloading something! Needless to say I was pissed off, so I check the site with a browser and it's a bunch of jpeg's, erkay. I do an nslookup on the IP and it has no hostname. Then I enter the IP into google and I get a view hits for some security lists, and one says that it's TSAdbot. Apparently it downloads ads for a view different applications, like pkzip and AIM. I don't know if it's just me, but that just seems really rude. I mean I guess it's okay, they need to advertise, but using my CPU resources hanging around in the background all the time downloading soap ads for programs I already bought, or are free seems pretty shitty to me.
On a more serious note, what would be nice is if there was a set-up that noticed a portscan in progress and blocked that IP (plus notified the administrator etc). Anyone know of something like this?
Run iplog to stdout and use a perl script as a "wrapper", then manipulate your firewall rules based on the output.
I was watching a investment show on TV, and some "expert" explained what the good attributes of a company to invest in are. The most important one seemed to be if they had patented or trade secreted technology.
All the talk about forcing MS to open thier specs seems, based on what I've read and heard, would really cause thier stocks to drop. Hell, they don't even need to break them up. They just need to make them open up everything, thier media player codec, thier browser integration implementation, and thier doc/xls formats. Maybe require them to only use the www consortium standards...
I guess breaking them up is just a double assurance that they will have a hard time moving in such a fluid predatory body though, which would be a good thing.
Business is competitive and ruthless because, we, as customers are also competitive and ruthless. When we decide that we don't like a particular product or service, or service provider we drop them in a nano-second.
That's a poor reasoning. Are you saying since business is inherently ruthless, there should be no guidelines?
Remember they can sell their product, Windows, at whatever price they want with whatever conditions they want.
This is untrue. There are specific laws that state that you cannot do this very thing. It's called anti-trust law, ever heard of it?
Let's see... they've got 99% OS market share. It's perfectly okay for them to bundle a Multimedia Codec (Media player), with a web browser, closed API office documents, amond other things for absolutely free? What other reason would a company possibly do this? They have ASSURED market dominance, it's not fair, and it's illegal. Plain and simple.
Compaq is free to sell its PCs with another operating system or make a deal with Microsoft.
No, they are not. A lot of companies are *forced* to bundle Windows with their OEM PC equipment. Including the company I work for(unamed;-). If we didn't, MS would *destroy* us.
Business is business. If you don't like Microsoft's practices then don't buy their software for your home or office.
Not true, you don't have a choice. What is the requirement when sending a resume, or a document to a company? Either text or a word doc, most won't talk to you if you don't send them a.doc. By embracing and extending basically every protocol they could get thier hands on, included with thier market dominance they have created a perfect situation for themselves. It's all closed and controlled by them, which is against business law. Your understanding of business ethos is a little screwy.
Ahh yes, I'm sure they did no research and just did the opposite of Macintosh for that very reason. In fact I bet they made no coorelation between users of applications and the applications themselves. I bet they didn't even ask them where they wanted the standard components of their applications, which they then laid down as a standard guideline for every application thereafter to avoid lawsuits.
Why would anyone make an assumption about the left(begin) to right(end) way of thinking when designing the UI. Then use that procedurally throughout the entire design, from menus to even the way you click on a button... O look you left click it starts the app, you right click close is right there! O look the scroll bars are on the right side so you can manipulate the fate of the window as the mouse pointer is tilted leftward as similarly would your right-hand if you were reaching towards a desk, (perhaps because people feel so use to turning pages with the "*EDGE*"). Shall I go on about how the default setup of the desktop is obviously ergonomically designed for a right handed (the majority) user as well?
I'm just focusing on this because you seem to think it's so ludicrous. Look at it dude, it's consistant down to the last minute click and point.
Yet this was never considered?... brilliant. Forgive me for noticing an *OBVIOUS* pattern, in this shoddy user interface.
The best thing about windows is it's interface. Haven't you ever seen those commercials on TV with the woman from microsoft testing childrens reactions to the ui of windows? Microsoft has invested large amounts of time and money to uncover the psychology of what people want in a user interface. I used windows for a very short time before I got into linux/unix as my OS of choice and I still have the propenisity to design my UI's with the same consideration MS has taken with windows, because that what feels natural.
For instance the x close button on the top right side. I can see how that relates in western readers of books, when you are done with the page you reach to the top right corner and turn the page (close the window). When you start reading again you start at the top left side, "File->open->new file" (similar to the mental processes that occur when you start the new page).
That's just one of the few examples I came up with off the top of my head.
While you can bear a concealed handgun, you are not allowed to bring it on a public bus, or many places of business. The signs usually say something like 'No firearms beyond this point'. Which is basically making people to give up their Constitutional rights to bear arms. The rules here will be similar.
I'm not a lawyer, but this kind of case doesn't hold up without case law, and precedence to back it up. People were once allowed to jet around strapped, but hundreds of years of case law has shown that reserving your right to restrict such behavior is permissable. Also he's taking the letter of the law, and not the spirit of law, which does not hold up in court.
You need precedence pal to show that restricting others rights reflects your interest in upholding the spirit of the law.
To download binaries or proceed into this site, you have to give up your rights under the GPL.
Isn't this exactly what UCITA promises to make binding. This is the kind of crap that's going to come up if UCITA is passed. In effect throwing away centuries of precedence, just like the DCMA has done with 'fair use' law.
I read somewhere, can't remember where that the entire world uses 28,000,000,000 gallons of gas a day. So that's about 105,840,000,000 liters a day. You'd need at least 3,175,200,000,000 liters of algea on any given day worldwide to produce a steady flow of H2.
Bullshit, if you are supporting an environment, you created and/or sysadmin, you call the shots. Or you convince your boss to lay down the rules. I.E. "We will not support your environment if you are not running the latest version of debian.", etc. Else you tell them to find someone else to support them, they'll switch. It's called a support agreement. Having many, many distros IS a blessing. You can tailor your evironment to which distro you want, the one that makes your support most productive.
Offtopic: UNIX is ideal for desktop environments. For one the users only have access to the system as their user, they almost can't screw up system level things. I say this from first hand experience working for a group of 8 who supports over 1500 HPUX desktops. We laugh at the windows helpdesk scurrying around all day and night fixing systems. We have the users home dirs on nfs mounts, so we can update the systems at will, without having to remove user data or shutdown the system. We even use scripts to update systems and applications via rsync upon reboot. We have reduced admin/helpdesk time to next to zero, so we can lie around writing web tools and looking good (getting more support agreements).:-)
Drugs should most certainly be decriminalized, even those that you have suggested. Drug use is inherent to human nature, it is a fact. You can observe the taking of psychotropic drugs since the beginning of human history and no culture, country or state since the beginning of human nature has been devoid of the use of them. No amount of laws will ever change this, and no amount of laws will ever make people stop taking drugs.
Take a look at decriminalization tactics used in the Dutch Model. The Dutch maintain that it is not a matter of ethos but "basically and principally a matter of health and of social well-being." They tend to deal with the drug "situation" non-violently, not indiscriminantly as you suggest we do.
You are going to sit there and whine about them being persecuted? Damn straight. I don't think they are persecuted enough.
Severe and disproportionate sentences had not succeeded in frightening off the growing number of users, and the efforts undertaken by the authorities ran counter to the insight of modern criminology. An all-out fight against drug abuse and drug abusers threatened to drive the latter over the edges of society into an underground and invisible realm, and thus, beyond the reach of any "helping" institution - other than the law. The methodology you propose is dangerous and radical, and no offense, but somewhat illogical. I suggest that you take a look at some examples of countries that have decriminalized the use of drugs and then make assumptions. I'm not going to get into the specifics here, because I'm way offtopic. I'll just go to say, that the current system *creates* organized crime, it almost *promotes* it. Decriminalizing drugs, in every instance where it has been thoughtfully, and carefully implemented has been highly effective and should be taken into consideration.
I agree! My mom works for Novell in the main marketing office and I helped her out for a couple weeks as receptionist when I was between jobs, and I must say! I saw some of the stuff they were doing in the test labs and the software I was using to do the little I was doing. It was some VERY cool software. The NDS directory tools from a users perspective were phenomenal!! I'm a youngin' in the IT world (I'm lost when my coworkers talk about PDP's and punch cards, my first modem was a 28.8:-) but I've heard that Novell used to be a drag, internally I mean. From what I've seen though, the "New Face of Novell" is looking good, I believe it. I disagree with people that say that Novell is decrepit, and lost in it's old ways or just don't Get It(tm). All the people I interacted with seemed to be very eager and bright talent, and thier tools ROCKED! The sentiment over there is that they are aiming to take the world by storm, not ride the Novell "name".
In many ways you could say that Linux uses an OO style of programming, but that's not the most interesting feature of the HURD. I'm not going to get into the Microkernel v. Monolithic debate either, because that's a subjective engineering point of view. The real strength of HURD will be that it was agressively multithreaded from the ground up. Linux is being augmented with things such as SMP, and fine grain locks, but what keeps it behind NT in performance on multiple CPU/Network cards, is that it has proven slow and difficult to work these features in, because it wasn't part of it's inherent design. Also linux doesn't have a threaded TCP/IP stack, this is imporant for multiple network card performance. I've read that the linux tcp/ip kernel code is up to 500,000 lines long, and that it will be an arduous task to make it multithreaded, as only a few people have taken the time to fully understand it. Also if they rewrite it, they will have to coordinate everyone who wrote every NIC driver for a rewrite, don't expect it anytime soon. It's somewhat usable now, if you are persistant. I think that will be the main strong suit of the HURD, that once it's actually usable and people see what it can do, it'll be a more desireable environment for developers in a Multiple CPU/NIC environments.
Not to mention that because it's OO nature will make it easier to rewrite the guts while keeping structures, functions and other naming conventions intact, which is a problem which plagues linux development kernels...
This guy is just looking for some shit to stir. I read the atricle and laughed out loud. He may or may not believe what he says, but he sure can get people all riled up. Infoworld probably read some of his flaming articles and realized he could get some mad hits/press for ther organization.
Last I heard that was a technology from our "friends" the Open Group. HP and IBM licensed there proprietary code and used it as there LVM. I think they would definately have issues with IBM opening up that code. Given that the lvm code base that already exists for linux has the same functionality, and even uses the same ideas of volume groups and logical volumes (hell even the same naming conventions for files). I wouldn't be surprised if we hear about a law suit about it in the near future. :-(
I hate the dumb comments like "GNU/Linux pffft, it's linux, simple as that. RMS needs to stop being such a dick!". It's important to consider that if there had been no GNU, there probably would have been no GNU/Linux, however if there had never been the Linux Kernel, most likely all the r&d would have just gone into HURD and there most likely would have been a GNU/Hurd *anyway*.
People do need to read up on thier history and give props.
I'm pretty sure that they aren't trying to sue based on the fact that a trade secret was uncovered. I think they are sueing based on the fact that the software was meant to circumvent copy-protection technologies, which is explicitly illegal based on privisions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Which is why it's so important that you email the Copyright office with your opinion on what exemptions should be made for this rule, such as for reasons that are as obviously non-malicious as the deCSS authors intended. Read on, for more information on how to take part in ensuring your freedom to discover.
Yeah I know, this seems like a really neat idea. I don't see why it would be such a waste of bandwidth. You'd just need a client application that can read out streams of text... The bandwidth wouldn't be the difficult part, it'd be getting the facial movements and the voice to sound smooth and lifelike. That'd be neat to have a chick reading slashdot headlines (or whatever) asking you if you wanted to visit that site now and stuff. Very cool!! All you need is a basic framework then you could put skins and stuff over it like you were saying, different voice predefines, etc. Of course it would have a scripting interface to perform just about sys admin task you can think of too! Shweet...
The answer is if you use the Gregorian Calendar and start the first millennium with the year 1 AD then the third millennium begins with the year 2001 AD. But if you use the Common Era Calendar, in which years are numbered -2, -1, 0, 1, 2,..., and you begin the first millennium with the year 0 CE then the third millennium begins with the year 2000 CE. You have a choice. And if you opt for the Common Era Calendar you no longer have to put up with the smug assertion that "there was no year zero (so the new millennium begins in 2001)". There was no year zero when Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian Calendar in the 16th Century but there certainly is one now, and the new millennium in the Common Era Calendar begins in 2000 CE.
The number zero was introduced into westerm circles, along with the Arabic numerals we use to day, in the 13th century, but the church refused to allow them to be used, simply on the grounds that they were invented by Muslims. However, zero and the numbering system we use today did eventually make it into acceptance by the 16th century, and greatly simplified mathematics in Europe. We can't really blame the church for 2000/2001 issue, because the current year numbering system that we used (2 BC, 1 BC, 1 AD,...) was originally designed by a monk in either the 7th or 8th century, before we even heard of the Arabic numbering system or zero.
Roman numerals do not have a figure designating zero, and treating zero as a number on an equal footing with other numbers was not common in the 6th century when our present year reckoning was established by Dionysius Exiguus. Dionysius let the year AD 1 start one week after what he believed to be Jesus' birthday. Therefore, AD 1 follows immediately after 1 BC with no intervening year zero. So a person who was born in 10 BC and died in AD 10, would have died at the age of 19, not 20. Furthermore, Dionysius' calculations were wrong. The Gospel of Matthew tells us that Jesus was born under the reign of King Herod the Great, and he died in 4 BC. It is likely that Jesus was actually born around 7 BC. The date of his birth is unknown; it may or may not be 25 December.
Since the "Anno Domini" system did not come into effect until the 6th Century A.D. it is artificial to speak of the years 1 A.D., 100 A.D., etc., because people living at that time knew nothing of this system of numbering years (since it had not then been invented yet). Furthermore the Romans in the reign of Augustus (27 B.C. to 14 A.D.) were somewhat lax in the proper observance of leap years. But we can project backwards (and forwards) from 525 A.D. by representing the succession of years by the series of natural numbers: 1, 2, 3,..., 100,..., 500,... Then we can say that the period from 1 A.D. through 10 A.D. (including both years) was a period of ten years (since there are ten numbers in the series 1, 2,..., 10). Similarly from 1 A.D. through 100 A.D. is a period of 100 years, and from 1 A.D. to 1000 A.D. is a period of 1000 years.
The word "millennium" means "a period of 1000 years" so we can conclude that the period from 1 A.D. through 1000 A.D. (including both years) constituted one millennium, and in fact, the first millennium of the Christian era. So the second millennium of the Christian era begins with the year 1001 A.D., or more exactly, on 1st January 1001 A.D. And the third millennium of the Christian era begins on 1st January 2001 A.D. So for Christians - or at least, for all who adhere to the Christian system of numbering years - the answer is clear: The new millennium begins on 1st January 2001 A.D. However, this is not the end of the matter, because the "Anno Domini" system of year numbering has a major flaw, namely, it may be OK for years since 1 A.D., but what happens when we consider earlier years? As is well known, such years are numbered in reverse order, and designated as years "Before Christ". Thus the year immediately before 1 A.D. is designated 1 B.C., and the series extends backwards: 2 B.C., 3 B.C., etc.
With the rise of modern scholarship, particularly astronomy, archaeology and chronological studies, this system was felt to be inadequate for scientific purposes. For one thing it does not lend itself to calculation using dates. For example (a very simple one), how many years elapsed between 1st January 6 B.C. and 1st January 6 A.D.? Twelve years? No. The answer is not obvious (and still less obvious if we consider longer periods such as that from 535 B.C. to 481 A.D.). So astronomers and chronologists decided to number years by representing the succession of years by the doubly-infinite series of positive and negative numbers:..., -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3... This is called the "astronomical" system of numbering years. In this system years from 1 onwards have the same numbers as years A.D. (year 1 = 1 A.D., and so on), but years B.C. are related as follows: The year 0 in the astronomical system is the year 1 B.C., and the year -n in the astronomical system is the year n+1 B.C. (for n = 1, 2, 3,...). Conversely, the year n B.C. is the year -(n-1) in the astronomical system. Thus year -1 = 2 B.C., year -2 = 3 B.C., and so on.
A millennium is, by definition, a period of 1000 years. But it is no part of the definition that a millennium must begin or end with a particular year number. If we adopt the astronomical year numbering system then we can begin the "first" millennium with year 0 just as well as with year 1. Strictly speaking, there is no first millennium in the astronomical system, since it simply numbers years by mapping them onto the sequence..., -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, ..., and we are free to begin millennia where we think fit. It is thus clear that the answer to the question as to when the new millennium begins depends on which system of year-numbering one chooses to use. Christians may prefer to stay with the system of years "Anno Domini", in which case they must answer that the new millennium begins on 1st January 2001 A.D. Scientists and others who prefer a more rational and useful system of numbering years may prefer to adopt explicitly the astronomical system. In this case they are free to begin millennia from the years 1, 1001, 2001, and so on (in which case the third millennium begins on 1st January 2001), or from the years 0, 1000, 2000, and so on (in which case the third millennium begins on 1st January 2000). Thus anyone who wishes, for whatever reason, to celebrate the start of the new millennium on 1st January 2000 has entirely good and rational grounds for doing so, namely, (i) the adoption of the astronomical system for numbering years, combined with (ii) the convention of beginning millennia with years whose numbers end in "000" (and beginning centuries with years whose numbers end in "00"). Note that this article does not show that those who hold (as those who adhere to the Christian calendar must hold) that the new millennium begins on 1st January 2001 are mistaken. Such people have reasons to justify their preference. But this does show that anyone who prefers to think of the year 2000 as the first year of the new millennium has perfectly sound reasons for doing so.
I plagorized the SHIT out of this from postings on slashdot and on the internet... no offense to anyone.
I think one of the most eloquent that Andy said and actually pulled was something to the effect of...
"Laughter puts to much pressure on the audience, I want to effect them from the gut without knowing why or what is happening to them."
It wasn't about comedy or song and dance. Andy didn't let the audience get away with just having fun. Laughing is just a reaction to stimuli, it's not a life changing experience. He wanted everyone to step back and look at themselves and realize it was all an illusion. The comedy comes from letting people think that it's real. The punchline is for the people who get it and are able to look at the animal in themselves, based on the reaction of those that don't understand.
Everything Andy did was purposeful and exact. He wanted people to not like him, or think he was mediocre. John Katz article was just the punchline of Andy's joke... a perfect example of mediocre, normal response to well defined and orchestrated stimuli.
Geeeez, I'm sick of this I-hate/I-love Katz crap. If you don't like him, go into your prefs and turn him off, if you do like him read on. Simple as that.
Slashdot Mirror
A similar wierd thing happened to me one time. I have a home network with a linux machine as a gateway and a few other machines running various OS's. Anyway I was sitting thier working on some code. I look up and my modem is blinking away as if I am downloading something, though I wasn't intentionally doing this. I telneted over to my gateway and did a `netstat -M`, and I see my windows box is connected to an FTP site and is downloading something! Needless to say I was pissed off, so I check the site with a browser and it's a bunch of jpeg's, erkay. I do an nslookup on the IP and it has no hostname. Then I enter the IP into google and I get a view hits for some security lists, and one says that it's TSAdbot. Apparently it downloads ads for a view different applications, like pkzip and AIM. I don't know if it's just me, but that just seems really rude. I mean I guess it's okay, they need to advertise, but using my CPU resources hanging around in the background all the time downloading soap ads for programs I already bought, or are free seems pretty shitty to me.
On a more serious note, what would be nice is if there was a set-up that noticed a portscan in progress and blocked that IP (plus notified the administrator etc). Anyone know of something like this?
Run iplog to stdout and use a perl script as a "wrapper", then manipulate your firewall rules based on the output.
I was watching a investment show on TV, and some "expert" explained what the good attributes of a company to invest in are. The most important one seemed to be if they had patented or trade secreted technology.
All the talk about forcing MS to open thier specs seems, based on what I've read and heard, would really cause thier stocks to drop. Hell, they don't even need to break them up. They just need to make them open up everything, thier media player codec, thier browser integration implementation, and thier doc/xls formats. Maybe require them to only use the www consortium standards...
I guess breaking them up is just a double assurance that they will have a hard time moving in such a fluid predatory body though, which would be a good thing.
Business is competitive and ruthless because, we, as customers are also competitive and ruthless. When we decide that we don't like a particular product or service, or service provider we drop them in a nano-second.
;-). If we didn't, MS would *destroy* us.
.doc. By embracing and extending basically every protocol they could get thier hands on, included with thier market dominance they have created a perfect situation for themselves. It's all closed and controlled by them, which is against business law. Your understanding of business ethos is a little screwy.
That's a poor reasoning. Are you saying since business is inherently ruthless, there should be no guidelines?
Remember they can sell their product, Windows, at whatever price they want with whatever conditions they want.
This is untrue. There are specific laws that state that you cannot do this very thing. It's called anti-trust law, ever heard of it?
Let's see... they've got 99% OS market share. It's perfectly okay for them to bundle a Multimedia Codec (Media player), with a web browser, closed API office documents, amond other things for absolutely free? What other reason would a company possibly do this? They have ASSURED market dominance, it's not fair, and it's illegal. Plain and simple.
Compaq is free to sell its PCs with another operating system or make a deal with Microsoft.
No, they are not. A lot of companies are *forced* to bundle Windows with their OEM PC equipment. Including the company I work for(unamed
Business is business. If you don't like Microsoft's practices then don't buy their software for your home or office.
Not true, you don't have a choice. What is the requirement when sending a resume, or a document to a company? Either text or a word doc, most won't talk to you if you don't send them a
Ahh yes, I'm sure they did no research and just did the opposite of Macintosh for that very reason. In fact I bet they made no coorelation between users of applications and the applications themselves. I bet they didn't even ask them where they wanted the standard components of their applications, which they then laid down as a standard guideline for every application thereafter to avoid lawsuits.
Why would anyone make an assumption about the left(begin) to right(end) way of thinking when designing the UI. Then use that procedurally throughout the entire design, from menus to even the way you click on a button... O look you left click it starts the app, you right click close is right there! O look the scroll bars are on the right side so you can manipulate the fate of the window as the mouse pointer is tilted leftward as similarly would your right-hand if you were reaching towards a desk, (perhaps because people feel so use to turning pages with the "*EDGE*"). Shall I go on about how the default setup of the desktop is obviously ergonomically designed for a right handed (the majority) user as well?
I'm just focusing on this because you seem to think it's so ludicrous. Look at it dude, it's consistant down to the last minute click and point.
Yet this was never considered?... brilliant. Forgive me for noticing an *OBVIOUS* pattern, in this shoddy user interface.
The best thing about windows is it's interface. Haven't you ever seen those commercials on TV with the woman from microsoft testing childrens reactions to the ui of windows? Microsoft has invested large amounts of time and money to uncover the psychology of what people want in a user interface. I used windows for a very short time before I got into linux/unix as my OS of choice and I still have the propenisity to design my UI's with the same consideration MS has taken with windows, because that what feels natural.
For instance the x close button on the top right side. I can see how that relates in western readers of books, when you are done with the page you reach to the top right corner and turn the page (close the window). When you start reading again you start at the top left side, "File->open->new file" (similar to the mental processes that occur when you start the new page).
That's just one of the few examples I came up with off the top of my head.
While you can bear a concealed handgun, you are not allowed to bring it on a public bus, or many places of business. The signs usually say something like 'No firearms beyond this point'. Which is basically making people to give up their Constitutional rights to bear arms. The rules here will be similar.
I'm not a lawyer, but this kind of case doesn't hold up without case law, and precedence to back it up. People were once allowed to jet around strapped, but hundreds of years of case law has shown that reserving your right to restrict such behavior is permissable. Also he's taking the letter of the law, and not the spirit of law, which does not hold up in court.
You need precedence pal to show that restricting others rights reflects your interest in upholding the spirit of the law.
To download binaries or proceed into this site, you have to give up your rights under the GPL.
Isn't this exactly what UCITA promises to make binding. This is the kind of crap that's going to come up if UCITA is passed. In effect throwing away centuries of precedence, just like the DCMA has done with 'fair use' law.
I read somewhere, can't remember where that the entire world uses 28,000,000,000 gallons of gas a day. So that's about 105,840,000,000 liters a day. You'd need at least 3,175,200,000,000 liters of algea on any given day worldwide to produce a steady flow of H2.
That's a lot of sludge.
Bullshit, if you are supporting an environment, you created and/or sysadmin, you call the shots. Or you convince your boss to lay down the rules. I.E. "We will not support your environment if you are not running the latest version of debian.", etc. Else you tell them to find someone else to support them, they'll switch. It's called a support agreement. Having many, many distros IS a blessing. You can tailor your evironment to which distro you want, the one that makes your support most productive.
:-)
Offtopic:
UNIX is ideal for desktop environments. For one the users only have access to the system as their user, they almost can't screw up system level things. I say this from first hand experience working for a group of 8 who supports over 1500 HPUX desktops. We laugh at the windows helpdesk scurrying around all day and night fixing systems. We have the users home dirs on nfs mounts, so we can update the systems at will, without having to remove user data or shutdown the system. We even use scripts to update systems and applications via rsync upon reboot. We have reduced admin/helpdesk time to next to zero, so we can lie around writing web tools and looking good (getting more support agreements).
Drugs should most certainly be decriminalized, even those that you have suggested. Drug use is inherent to human nature, it is a fact. You can observe the taking of psychotropic drugs since the beginning of human history and no culture, country or state since the beginning of human nature has been devoid of the use of them. No amount of laws will ever change this, and no amount of laws will ever make people stop taking drugs.
Take a look at decriminalization tactics used in the Dutch Model. The Dutch maintain that it is not a matter of ethos but "basically and principally a matter of health and of social well-being." They tend to deal with the drug "situation" non-violently, not indiscriminantly as you suggest we do.
You are going to sit there and whine about them being persecuted? Damn straight. I don't think they are persecuted enough.
Severe and disproportionate sentences had not succeeded in frightening off the growing number of users, and the efforts undertaken by the authorities ran counter to the insight of modern criminology. An all-out fight against drug abuse and drug abusers threatened to drive the latter over the edges of society into an underground and invisible realm, and thus, beyond the reach of any "helping" institution - other than the law. The methodology you propose is dangerous and radical, and no offense, but somewhat illogical. I suggest that you take a look at some examples of countries that have decriminalized the use of drugs and then make assumptions. I'm not going to get into the specifics here, because I'm way offtopic. I'll just go to say, that the current system *creates* organized crime, it almost *promotes* it. Decriminalizing drugs, in every instance where it has been thoughtfully, and carefully implemented has been highly effective and should be taken into consideration.
Or perhaps he was describing schrodinger's cat, or observing what today is now known as quantum strangeness.
Yeah, but each platform has its advantages. (Every moron can write windoze apps in visual basic
I guess that's an advantage if the user is a moron who can stand using a VB app written by a moron.
I agree! My mom works for Novell in the main marketing office and I helped her out for a couple weeks as receptionist when I was between jobs, and I must say! I saw some of the stuff they were doing in the test labs and the software I was using to do the little I was doing. It was some VERY cool software. The NDS directory tools from a users perspective were phenomenal!! I'm a youngin' in the IT world (I'm lost when my coworkers talk about PDP's and punch cards, my first modem was a 28.8 :-) but I've heard that Novell used to be a drag, internally I mean. From what I've seen though, the "New Face of Novell" is looking good, I believe it. I disagree with people that say that Novell is decrepit, and lost in it's old ways or just don't Get It(tm). All the people I interacted with seemed to be very eager and bright talent, and thier tools ROCKED! The sentiment over there is that they are aiming to take the world by storm, not ride the Novell "name".
That's what I meant to say
In many ways you could say that Linux uses an OO style of programming, but that's not the most interesting feature of the HURD. I'm not going to get into the Microkernel v. Monolithic debate either, because that's a subjective engineering point of view. The real strength of HURD will be that it was agressively multithreaded from the ground up. Linux is being augmented with things such as SMP, and fine grain locks, but what keeps it behind NT in performance on multiple CPU/Network cards, is that it has proven slow and difficult to work these features in, because it wasn't part of it's inherent design. Also linux doesn't have a threaded TCP/IP stack, this is imporant for multiple network card performance. I've read that the linux tcp/ip kernel code is up to 500,000 lines long, and that it will be an arduous task to make it multithreaded, as only a few people have taken the time to fully understand it. Also if they rewrite it, they will have to coordinate everyone who wrote every NIC driver for a rewrite, don't expect it anytime soon. It's somewhat usable now, if you are persistant. I think that will be the main strong suit of the HURD, that once it's actually usable and people see what it can do, it'll be a more desireable environment for developers in a Multiple CPU/NIC environments.
Not to mention that because it's OO nature will make it easier to rewrite the guts while keeping structures, functions and other naming conventions intact, which is a problem which plagues linux development kernels...
This guy is just looking for some shit to stir. I read the atricle and laughed out loud. He may or may not believe what he says, but he sure can get people all riled up. Infoworld probably read some of his flaming articles and realized he could get some mad hits/press for ther organization.
Anyway...
Last I heard that was a technology from our "friends" the Open Group. HP and IBM licensed there proprietary code and used it as there LVM. I think they would definately have issues with IBM opening up that code. Given that the lvm code base that already exists for linux has the same functionality, and even uses the same ideas of volume groups and logical volumes (hell even the same naming conventions for files). I wouldn't be surprised if we hear about a law suit about it in the near future.
:-(
I hate the dumb comments like "GNU/Linux pffft, it's linux, simple as that. RMS needs to stop being such a dick!". It's important to consider that if there had been no GNU, there probably would have been no GNU/Linux, however if there had never been the Linux Kernel, most likely all the r&d would have just gone into HURD and there most likely would have been a GNU/Hurd *anyway*.
People do need to read up on thier history and give props.
Am I the only one on the planet who has watched Quicktime movie in linux before?
Go get your client here...
http://xanim.va.pubnix.com/home.html
I'm pretty sure that they aren't trying to sue based on the fact that a trade secret was uncovered. I think they are sueing based on the fact that the software was meant to circumvent copy-protection technologies, which is explicitly illegal based on privisions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Which is why it's so important that you email the Copyright office with your opinion on what exemptions should be made for this rule, such as for reasons that are as obviously non-malicious as the deCSS authors intended. Read on, for more information on how to take part in ensuring your freedom to discover.
Yeah I know, this seems like a really neat idea. I don't see why it would be such a waste of bandwidth. You'd just need a client application that can read out streams of text... The bandwidth wouldn't be the difficult part, it'd be getting the facial movements and the voice to sound smooth and lifelike. That'd be neat to have a chick reading slashdot headlines (or whatever) asking you if you wanted to visit that site now and stuff. Very cool!! All you need is a basic framework then you could put skins and stuff over it like you were saying, different voice predefines, etc. Of course it would have a scripting interface to perform just about sys admin task you can think of too!
Shweet...
When does the Millennium Begin?
..., and you begin the first millennium with the year 0 CE
...) was originally designed by
..., 100, ..., 500, ... Then we can say that the period from 1 A.D. ..., 10). Similarly from 1 A.D. through 100
..., -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3 ... This is called the "astronomical" ...).
..., -2, -1, 0, 1, 2,
The answer is if you use the Gregorian Calendar and start the first
millennium with the year 1 AD then the third millennium begins with the year
2001 AD. But if you use the Common Era Calendar, in which years are numbered
-2, -1, 0, 1, 2,
then the third millennium begins with the year 2000 CE. You have a choice. And
if you opt for the Common Era Calendar you no longer have to put up with the
smug assertion that "there was no year zero (so the new millennium begins in
2001)". There was no year zero when Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian
Calendar in the 16th Century but there certainly is one now, and the new
millennium in the Common Era Calendar begins in 2000 CE.
The number zero was introduced into westerm circles, along with the
Arabic numerals we use to day, in the 13th century, but the church refused to
allow them to be used, simply on the grounds that they were invented by Muslims.
However, zero and the numbering system we use today did eventually make it into
acceptance by the 16th century, and greatly simplified mathematics in Europe.
We can't really blame the church for 2000/2001 issue, because the current year
numbering system that we used (2 BC, 1 BC, 1 AD,
a monk in either the 7th or 8th century, before we even heard of the Arabic
numbering system or zero.
Roman numerals do not have a figure designating zero, and treating zero
as a number on an equal footing with other numbers was not common in the 6th
century when our present year reckoning was established by Dionysius Exiguus.
Dionysius let the year AD 1 start one week after what he believed to be Jesus'
birthday. Therefore, AD 1 follows immediately after 1 BC with no intervening
year zero. So a person who was born in 10 BC and died in AD 10, would have died
at the age of 19, not 20. Furthermore, Dionysius' calculations were wrong. The
Gospel of Matthew tells us that Jesus was born under the reign of King Herod the
Great, and he died in 4 BC. It is likely that Jesus was actually born around 7
BC. The date of his birth is unknown; it may or may not be 25 December.
Since the "Anno Domini" system did not come into effect until the 6th
Century A.D. it is artificial to speak of the years 1 A.D., 100 A.D., etc.,
because people living at that time knew nothing of this system of numbering
years (since it had not then been invented yet). Furthermore the Romans in the
reign of Augustus (27 B.C. to 14 A.D.) were somewhat lax in the proper
observance of leap years. But we can project backwards (and forwards) from 525
A.D. by representing the succession of years by the series of natural numbers:
1, 2, 3,
through 10 A.D. (including both years) was a period of ten years (since there
are ten numbers in the series 1, 2,
A.D. is a period of 100 years, and from 1 A.D. to 1000 A.D. is a period of 1000
years.
The word "millennium" means "a period of 1000 years" so we can conclude
that the period from 1 A.D. through 1000 A.D. (including both years) constituted
one millennium, and in fact, the first millennium of the Christian era. So the
second millennium of the Christian era begins with the year 1001 A.D., or more
exactly, on 1st January 1001 A.D. And the third millennium of the Christian era
begins on 1st January 2001 A.D. So for Christians - or at least, for all who
adhere to the Christian system of numbering years - the answer is clear: The new
millennium begins on 1st January 2001 A.D. However, this is not the end of the
matter, because the "Anno Domini" system of year numbering has a major flaw,
namely, it may be OK for years since 1 A.D., but what happens when we consider
earlier years? As is well known, such years are numbered in reverse order, and
designated as years "Before Christ". Thus the year immediately before 1 A.D. is
designated 1 B.C., and the series extends backwards: 2 B.C., 3 B.C., etc.
With the rise of modern scholarship, particularly astronomy, archaeology
and chronological studies, this system was felt to be inadequate for scientific
purposes. For one thing it does not lend itself to calculation using dates. For
example (a very simple one), how many years elapsed between 1st January 6 B.C.
and 1st January 6 A.D.? Twelve years? No. The answer is not obvious (and still
less obvious if we consider longer periods such as that from 535 B.C. to 481
A.D.). So astronomers and chronologists decided to number years by representing
the succession of years by the doubly-infinite series of positive and negative
numbers:
system of numbering years. In this system years from 1 onwards have the same
numbers as years A.D. (year 1 = 1 A.D., and so on), but years B.C. are related
as follows: The year 0 in the astronomical system is the year 1 B.C., and the
year -n in the astronomical system is the year n+1 B.C. (for n = 1, 2, 3,
Conversely, the year n B.C. is the year -(n-1) in the astronomical system. Thus
year -1 = 2 B.C., year -2 = 3 B.C., and so on.
A millennium is, by definition, a period of 1000 years. But it is no
part of the definition that a millennium must begin or end with a particular
year number. If we adopt the astronomical year numbering system then we can
begin the "first" millennium with year 0 just as well as with year 1. Strictly
speaking, there is no first millennium in the astronomical system, since it
simply numbers years by mapping them onto the sequence
..., and we are free to begin millennia where we think fit. It is thus clear
that the answer to the question as to when the new millennium begins depends on
which system of year-numbering one chooses to use. Christians may prefer to stay
with the system of years "Anno Domini", in which case they must answer that the
new millennium begins on 1st January 2001 A.D. Scientists and others who prefer
a more rational and useful system of numbering years may prefer to adopt
explicitly the astronomical system. In this case they are free to begin
millennia from the years 1, 1001, 2001, and so on (in which case the third
millennium begins on 1st January 2001), or from the years 0, 1000, 2000, and so
on (in which case the third millennium begins on 1st January 2000). Thus anyone
who wishes, for whatever reason, to celebrate the start of the new millennium on
1st January 2000 has entirely good and rational grounds for doing so, namely,
(i) the adoption of the astronomical system for numbering years, combined with
(ii) the convention of beginning millennia with years whose numbers end in "000"
(and beginning centuries with years whose numbers end in "00"). Note that this
article does not show that those who hold (as those who adhere to the Christian
calendar must hold) that the new millennium begins on 1st January 2001 are
mistaken. Such people have reasons to justify their preference. But this does
show that anyone who prefers to think of the year 2000 as the first year of the
new millennium has perfectly sound reasons for doing so.
I plagorized the SHIT out of this from postings on slashdot and on the internet... no offense to anyone.
I think one of the most eloquent that Andy said and actually pulled was something to the effect of...
"Laughter puts to much pressure on the audience, I want to effect them from the gut without knowing why or what is happening to them."
It wasn't about comedy or song and dance. Andy didn't let the audience get away with just having fun. Laughing is just a reaction to stimuli, it's not a life changing experience. He wanted everyone to step back and look at themselves and realize it was all an illusion. The comedy comes from letting people think that it's real. The punchline is for the people who get it and are able to look at the animal in themselves, based on the reaction of those that don't understand.
Everything Andy did was purposeful and exact. He wanted people to not like him, or think he was mediocre. John Katz article was just the punchline of Andy's joke... a perfect example of mediocre, normal response to well defined and orchestrated stimuli.
Geeeez, I'm sick of this I-hate/I-love Katz crap. If you don't like him, go into your prefs and turn him off, if you do like him read on. Simple as that.
MEEPT!!!