AT&T (formally TCI) has cable internet access in the area. They're still in the process of deploying it in some areas. However, I think the price is pretty reasonable ($40/month, free first month and installation) and the performance is incredible.
I think the main problem is a lack of high-tech companies. Pittsburgh definitely has some, including Marconi (formally FORE Systems), Lycos, Black Box, the recently IPO'd FreeMarkets, and for those of you wanting to get in on a promising startup, there's the newly formed Spinnaker Networks.
Pittsburgh isn't a technology city yet, but it's getting there.
One of the reasons Linux will never be able to replace Mainframe operating systems is the fact that you have to reboot in order to upgrade the kernel.
Would the microkernel architecture of HURD make it possible to do a running-upgrade of (most of) the kernel? It would at least seem to be possible, if the modules are designed with this in mind.
But I'm skeptical. How do I know if it's authentic? Yes, I've helped develop a number of open source applications, but I never thought that I'd stand a chance of making "the cut".
Is there someone I can contact at VA Linux? Or can I somehow look myself up in a list online? Has anyone else attempted to verify their letter?
RedHat is fully entitled to developing software that is never released and strictly used internally
Absolutely. I totally agree. However, Red Hat has stated in the past that they will release all their software under the GPL. I guess I was just trying to hold their feet to the fire. Turns out that I was off base, and it wasn't necessary.
Why do you feel that you have the "free" right to services that others pay for?
I don't want access to the service. I wanted access to the code so that others (me) can provide the same service (in my lan, to support a bunch of machines internally, for example).
But as Michael Johnson has explained, the code is pretty much tied to thier internal systems, and thus probably wouldn't be too useful in and of itself. But they have made the protocol available, which is just as good as far as I'm concerned.
I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I wanted the service for free. I don't. I just want the code (or the protocols).
I'm sure we'll now see another round of everyone calling Red Hat "the next Microsoft". I was always one of the first to defend Red Hat. They have a great history of releasing everything they create under the GPL. There was absolutely no reason to expect them to do something wrong.
But I recently discovered something that now has me wondering if this will continue to be the case.
In Red Hat 6.1, there is a new program called the Red Hat Update Agent. Basically, it appears to be a program that allows you to automatically download and optionally install updated RPM's. It sounds like a wonderful new addition, and I wanted to try it out.
Well, you have to be a registered user. But that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that. They only want registered users to access their upgrade site (priority.redhat.com). I completely understand and agree with that. This is a service after all.
Because of this, I imagined that I (or anyone else) could simply setup one of these Update Agent servers myself. Knowing that Red Hat releases everything they create under the GPL, I started looking for the server-side CGI scripts.
I couldn't find them.
Now, it might just be that I didn't look hard enough. I have looked all over the FTP site, and I've tried several queries in their site's search engine. I haven't tried to actually send email to anyone at Red Hat, and I haven't actually asked anyone on a public forum (until now). But I'm still a little worried that the source for this script wasn't as easy to find as the sources for any other Red Hat software.
So, is it available? Or is Red Hat going to keep this script secret so that only registered Red Hat users can enjoy the benefits of the Update Agent?
Faster client software doesn't gain them anything. It just helps people running the client app inflate their egos by boosting their block counts.
It also steals more CPU cycles from a volunteer's machine that what is necessary. His machine could be used for other things besides SETI@home, you know.
This "fast enough" argument is ridiculous. There's always a good reason to make it faster.
Can you explain exactly how this voice actor touched anyone's life? Is there anyone in the world that wakes up in the morning and says, "Today is going to be a great day, thanks to the woman that does the voice of Kyle's Mom"?
You're mistaking "touched" for "had a profound impact upon".
I liked South Park. She was the voice of many South Park characters. She's made me laugh. She's made many, many people laugh.
Why so much anger? Do you simply hate celebrity status of people?
She was no more special than you or I. Her passing will not change the world. If I die, someone else will take over my job, and the same will happen with her.
Absolutely.
When I die, I will be replaced at work. But there will be ~100 people at work who will mourn my passing, because they either know me, or in most cases they simply know of my work and realize that losing me will be a setback for the company.
Now, Mary Kay is known by thousands and thousands of people all over the world. That's the only reason it's news. There's nothing wrong with that!
Obviously, you're unaware of the small nuclear weapon I have wired to go off when my EEG flatlines...
:^)
Then you will have profoundly touched my life at the time of your death. In the meantime, I will simply remember you as Yet Another Slashdot Poster.
...but SETI is not about processing data as quickly as possible...
Absolutely, positively false.
If that were the case, then SETI@home would simply do all the computations on their own machines, and not ask for help from thousands of systems distributed all over the world.
but how many people would download the code, apply the patches that speed it up, and never have a clue that they just fatally broke the FFT result testing algorithm?
This isn't rocket science. You have a central repository that takes in good patches. Clueless people know to just download good code from the repository. You have regression tests to test these patches.
If you can improve the code, instead of helping SETI by processing keys faster, you bring yourself out of alignment with everybody else...
What in the world do you mean by "alignment"? And why is it a bad thing?
Code that does the same thing, only faster, is known as better code.
What SETI@home needs to do is add some security and checking to their system. Double-check results every now and then. If a particular client is found to have given a bad result, then remove all results obtained from that client.
Telling people to not upgrade their clients just isn't good enough. It's quite easy for someone to maliciously hack a client to produce bad output. You need a system that can protect against this anyway. And once you have this system in place, then you'll also have protection against buggy clients. Then there should be no reason not to open-source the damn thing.
And here is yet another example of fame making someone more important than any poor joe on the street
You've got it all wrong.
It doesn't make the person more important. It's just that she has touched many more peoples' lives. Her death affects many more people than yours or mine would.
Does anyone know what happened to lowrent.org? I first heard about it here on slashdot. They were offering free web and ftp hosting for open source software.
I got an account there, and then one day it just disappeared. Someone else appears to have bought the domain now, and they're selling a CD of some sort.
The main difference is that under communism, the state owns the means of production, while under fascism, the means of production are privately owned, but under government control.
I think you're confusing fascism with the specific fascist regime of Nazi Germany. Fascism does not imply that a government is oppressive (unless you consider government control in and of itself to be oppressive).
Chinese government is a pretty good example, all things considered, of a large-scale communism.
China is not a good example of communism. They are communist in name only. I think you should read more about communism, and then take a look at the Chinese government, and you'll see that they're nothing alike.
I recommend reading the old Doonesbury strips...
I sincerely hope that you aren't learning about world politics from Doonesbury.
ESR certainly doesn't speak for me. He has no right to claim that he speaks for me.
Here I agree. While I actually share the same opinions as ESR concerning how bad the Chinese government is, I was rather taken aback that ESR would assume to speak for everyone on this matter. I think he crossed the line by stating this. He should not be attributing his personal thoughts and beliefs to the entire Linux community.
99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code, fix one bug, compile it again...
They really should have made it generalized enough that it can run on all major distributions.
Perhaps. But testing takes time & money. It will probably run fine on the other distributions, but IBM didn't want to spend the resorces to test it on any others.
There are going to be sysadmins out there who want Domino Server, but run Slackware or Debian.
I think that if someone is really interested in running Domino, they won't let a minor issue like distribution flavor stop them.
99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code, fix one bug, compile it again...
They aren't controlling who can use it. By putting the code under GPL, they're just making sure no one else can take away someone else's right to use and modify it.
At the risk of starting a GPL flame war...
The are controlling who can use the currently-available source code. In particular, BSD folks cannot use it, and neither can commercial entities whose kernels are not GPL'd and who do not wish to buy a license.
Worse, since they are also making it available under alternative licensing schemes, they themselves are taking away other's rights to use and modify the code streams that are released in commercial systems. Now, I suppose it could be licensed to commercial entities in a way that requires all changes made to the code be assigned to the ReiserFS developers under their copyright, but I don't think they would be adamant about such a clause if the commercial entity didn't want it, and the ReiserFS folks stand to make a good bit of money from a deal.
If the commercial entities were willing to redistribute the source for any changes they made, there would be no problem.
Wrong. Since this FS is linked against the kernel, they would also have to make their kernel source code available under the GPL (unless they obtain the source under different licensing - see above).
Again, the BSD folks are happy to redistribute the source for even their entire kernel, but because of the GPL restrictions (or features, as RMS would say), they cannot use this source in their product.
99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code, fix one bug, compile it again...
I noticed that this code is released under the GPL. That means that the *BSD folks can't just take the code and incorporate it into their OS's.
There is a clause in the license that states that if you contact them, they will let you use it under a different license. But I can't imagine them putting it under the BSD license. It sounds like they want to control who can use it, and they've decided that GNU projects and commercial entities who pay are their target market. If they ever release it under a BSD license, then commercial entities could just grab the BSD-released copy and work from there.
Will the BSD's simply miss out on this nice new filesystem?
99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code, fix one bug, compile it again...
...MS has used the free market to get their stuff on top and the Gov't has no business second-guessing those market dynamics.
MS became a dominant player via the free market. The problem is that they then realized that they could leverage the monopoly they had developed in the Operating System market to conquer other software markets. This is the flaw in the free market model - monopolies, natural or government imposed, break the model.
Microsoft has been able to trample many small companies who came up with new, unique software. They either buy out the company, or in many cases, they simply used their vast wealth to start working on a competitor to the new product. Then they make PC vendors offer their product and impose "penalties" for offering the competing product.
I don't care if Windows is the dominant OS. I don't care if Office is the dominant productivity suite. But I *do* care if other companies cannot carry competing products due to fear of Microsoft retaliating.
Yesterday was a sad day for freedom and liberty and personal choice.
Don't be so quick to judge. There are no penalties against Microsoft yet. If the only outcome of this trial is to give companies like Dell and Gateway the cojones to start offering Linux, *BSD, and BeOS on their machines, it will have been worth it. This trial has already done a lot to allow the free-market model to work again, and no penalties have been applied to Microsoft.
I would be happy if things stay just as they are now.
99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code, fix one bug, compile it again...
My only point was that the original post was way out of line when he questioned the "journalistic integrity" of Slashdot. The original article contains enough references to the fact that this will affect secured web access.
You are, of course, free to not trust CNET (with good reason).
eCommerce is not going to be using NT Domain logons as an authentication mechanism
Of course not, but don't go jumping to the conclusion that the only authentication mechanism that Microsoft is talking about is NT Domain logons. They most likely chose their vague wording for a reason.
Again, the fact that Mike Nash himself used e-commerce as an example where this licensing would apply should tell you that it will encompass more than just Domain logons. As much as you might not trust CNET's reporting, I don't think they would have made up the quote from Nash.
99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code, fix one bug, compile it again...
Didn't think I'd ever see something so patently false and just outright wrong on slashdot, but I guess I've been proven wrong. I think the Anti-Microsoft sentiment's gotten a bit overstrong.
FYI - no. You don't need a license to connect to an M$ webserver (yet).
The CNET article doesn't jive with your assertion. It's not saying that any web server connection will need a license, but any connection requiring authentication, such as would be necessary for a secure online transaction, would need one.
Mike Nash, the general manager for Windows 2000 himself gives web access as his one specific example!
It's a shame that you were so off target with this first comment. Your analysis of how the licensing scheme affects Samba servers was excellent. I hope people moderate your comment way up - people need to be made aware about this.
99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code, fix one bug, compile it again...
I decided to have Laser Eye Surgery a year ago. I can't remember how bad my eyesight used to be, but I couldn't even make out the largest letter on the eyechart. I've been corrected to 20-15 (better than 20-20!) in each eye.
If you want a good doctor, I think that doctor Zimmer in Pittsburgh has a great reputation in this field. Everyone I talked to had used him, and everyone had perfect vision afterwards. It's not cheap - $2000 per eye.
That being said, I'm the only person I know of to have had a side-effect from the surgery. At night, my pupils open wider than average, allowing light through part of the untreated portion of my eye. This causes a little bit of glaring around bright objects at night.
But I have perfect vision in the daytime, and for night driving I have eyedrops that will cause my pupils to constrict, removing the glare (but also making everything appear dimmer). If I had known about this side effect, I may not have had the surgery done. I used to have awesome night vision, and now my night vision is terrible.
99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code, fix one bug, compile it again...
Is it just me, or does the term `disposable' computer not sit right with you? I still get plenty of use out of a few old 486s!"
I still get good use out of my 486 (and even my 386 until the motherboard went bad a year ago). But the term "disposable" is the correct term, and I have no problem with it.
There's an old saying: "One man's trash is another man's treasure". People like us love to play around (and get good use out of) older machines. We prove day in and day out that they can still be useful. My Commodore is still, in many ways, the best game machine I've ever seen.
But for most people, each generation of PC doesn't stand a chance of running the next generation of MS Windows/Offic, and they need to upgrade. The PC hardware market is both commoditized and making technical leaps at an astounding rate. This causes hardware to become real cheap, real fast.
And after something becomes cheap enough, not only can you not sell it to somebody, but it often becomes a pain to even give it away. At that point, it's disposable.
Please don't actually throw any hardware away. There are plenty of charitable organizations and even individuals who would love that old piece of equipment. Yes, it takes a little bit of effort on your part, but making someone happy can have its own rewards.
99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code, fix one bug, compile it again...
Religion and freedom have never really gotten along, from the persecution of Galileo to the demands by Orthodox Jews that Jerusalem shut down its cinemas on Friday night to Islamic attacks on writers and reporters in some Middle Eastern countries. Technology, a disseminator of so much information, a force for freedom, has always come under fire as Satan's ally.
Come on, Katz! You must be wearing blinders if you truly believe that religion & freedom have never gotten along.
For starters, Christians believe that God has given each and every one of them "free will". That is, God is the ultimate supporter of the idea of Freedom of the individual! He lets us do as we please, and it is up to us to do what is right.
Many will argue that the United States, among other things, was founded on the idea of Freedom of Religion. And indeed, you'll find people practising all sorts of religions there.
I think it's ignorant at best and disingenous at worst to state that the concept of Freedom and the belief of Religion do not "get along".
99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code, fix one bug, compile it again...
Slashdot Mirror
I think the main problem is a lack of high-tech companies. Pittsburgh definitely has some, including Marconi (formally FORE Systems), Lycos, Black Box, the recently IPO'd FreeMarkets, and for those of you wanting to get in on a promising startup, there's the newly formed Spinnaker Networks.
Pittsburgh isn't a technology city yet, but it's getting there.
Would the microkernel architecture of HURD make it possible to do a running-upgrade of (most of) the kernel? It would at least seem to be possible, if the modules are designed with this in mind.
Any thoughts?
But I'm skeptical. How do I know if it's authentic? Yes, I've helped develop a number of open source applications, but I never thought that I'd stand a chance of making "the cut".
Is there someone I can contact at VA Linux? Or can I somehow look myself up in a list online? Has anyone else attempted to verify their letter?
But as Michael Johnson has explained, the code is pretty much tied to thier internal systems, and thus probably wouldn't be too useful in and of itself. But they have made the protocol available, which is just as good as far as I'm concerned.
I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I wanted the service for free. I don't. I just want the code (or the protocols).
I'm sorry I ever had doubts about the integrity of Red Hat! I give you my most humble apologies!
But I recently discovered something that now has me wondering if this will continue to be the case.
In Red Hat 6.1, there is a new program called the Red Hat Update Agent . Basically, it appears to be a program that allows you to automatically download and optionally install updated RPM's. It sounds like a wonderful new addition, and I wanted to try it out.
Well, you have to be a registered user. But that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that. They only want registered users to access their upgrade site (priority.redhat.com). I completely understand and agree with that. This is a service after all.
Because of this, I imagined that I (or anyone else) could simply setup one of these Update Agent servers myself. Knowing that Red Hat releases everything they create under the GPL, I started looking for the server-side CGI scripts.
I couldn't find them.
Now, it might just be that I didn't look hard enough. I have looked all over the FTP site, and I've tried several queries in their site's search engine. I haven't tried to actually send email to anyone at Red Hat, and I haven't actually asked anyone on a public forum (until now). But I'm still a little worried that the source for this script wasn't as easy to find as the sources for any other Red Hat software.
So, is it available? Or is Red Hat going to keep this script secret so that only registered Red Hat users can enjoy the benefits of the Update Agent?
This "fast enough" argument is ridiculous. There's always a good reason to make it faster.
I liked South Park. She was the voice of many South Park characters. She's made me laugh. She's made many, many people laugh.
Why so much anger? Do you simply hate celebrity status of people?
Absolutely.When I die, I will be replaced at work. But there will be ~100 people at work who will mourn my passing, because they either know me, or in most cases they simply know of my work and realize that losing me will be a setback for the company.
Now, Mary Kay is known by thousands and thousands of people all over the world. That's the only reason it's news. There's nothing wrong with that!
Then you will have profoundly touched my life at the time of your death. In the meantime, I will simply remember you as Yet Another Slashdot Poster.
If that were the case, then SETI@home would simply do all the computations on their own machines, and not ask for help from thousands of systems distributed all over the world.
This isn't rocket science. You have a central repository that takes in good patches. Clueless people know to just download good code from the repository. You have regression tests to test these patches. What in the world do you mean by "alignment"? And why is it a bad thing?Code that does the same thing, only faster, is known as better code.
What SETI@home needs to do is add some security and checking to their system. Double-check results every now and then. If a particular client is found to have given a bad result, then remove all results obtained from that client.
Telling people to not upgrade their clients just isn't good enough. It's quite easy for someone to maliciously hack a client to produce bad output. You need a system that can protect against this anyway. And once you have this system in place, then you'll also have protection against buggy clients. Then there should be no reason not to open-source the damn thing.
It doesn't make the person more important. It's just that she has touched many more peoples' lives. Her death affects many more people than yours or mine would.
There's nothing wrong with that.
What planet are you living on?
And, can I move there?
I got an account there, and then one day it just disappeared. Someone else appears to have bought the domain now, and they're selling a CD of some sort.
<sigh>
99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code,
fix one bug, compile it again...
I think you're confusing fascism with the specific fascist regime of Nazi Germany. Fascism does not imply that a government is oppressive (unless you consider government control in and of itself to be oppressive).
China is not a good example of communism. They are communist in name only. I think you should read more about communism, and then take a look at the Chinese government, and you'll see that they're nothing alike. I sincerely hope that you aren't learning about world politics from Doonesbury. Here I agree. While I actually share the same opinions as ESR concerning how bad the Chinese government is, I was rather taken aback that ESR would assume to speak for everyone on this matter. I think he crossed the line by stating this. He should not be attributing his personal thoughts and beliefs to the entire Linux community.99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code,
fix one bug, compile it again...
99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code,
fix one bug, compile it again...
The are controlling who can use the currently-available source code. In particular, BSD folks cannot use it, and neither can commercial entities whose kernels are not GPL'd and who do not wish to buy a license.
Worse, since they are also making it available under alternative licensing schemes, they themselves are taking away other's rights to use and modify the code streams that are released in commercial systems. Now, I suppose it could be licensed to commercial entities in a way that requires all changes made to the code be assigned to the ReiserFS developers under their copyright, but I don't think they would be adamant about such a clause if the commercial entity didn't want it, and the ReiserFS folks stand to make a good bit of money from a deal.
Wrong. Since this FS is linked against the kernel, they would also have to make their kernel source code available under the GPL (unless they obtain the source under different licensing - see above).Again, the BSD folks are happy to redistribute the source for even their entire kernel, but because of the GPL restrictions (or features, as RMS would say), they cannot use this source in their product.
99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code,
fix one bug, compile it again...
There is a clause in the license that states that if you contact them, they will let you use it under a different license. But I can't imagine them putting it under the BSD license. It sounds like they want to control who can use it, and they've decided that GNU projects and commercial entities who pay are their target market. If they ever release it under a BSD license, then commercial entities could just grab the BSD-released copy and work from there.
Will the BSD's simply miss out on this nice new filesystem?
99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code,
fix one bug, compile it again...
Microsoft has been able to trample many small companies who came up with new, unique software. They either buy out the company, or in many cases, they simply used their vast wealth to start working on a competitor to the new product. Then they make PC vendors offer their product and impose "penalties" for offering the competing product.
I don't care if Windows is the dominant OS. I don't care if Office is the dominant productivity suite. But I *do* care if other companies cannot carry competing products due to fear of Microsoft retaliating.
Don't be so quick to judge. There are no penalties against Microsoft yet. If the only outcome of this trial is to give companies like Dell and Gateway the cojones to start offering Linux, *BSD, and BeOS on their machines, it will have been worth it. This trial has already done a lot to allow the free-market model to work again, and no penalties have been applied to Microsoft.I would be happy if things stay just as they are now.
99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code,
fix one bug, compile it again...
Silly scientists, they didn't consider all the possibilities before jumping to a conclusion.
99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code,
fix one bug, compile it again...
You are, of course, free to not trust CNET (with good reason).
Of course not, but don't go jumping to the conclusion that the only authentication mechanism that Microsoft is talking about is NT Domain logons. They most likely chose their vague wording for a reason.Again, the fact that Mike Nash himself used e-commerce as an example where this licensing would apply should tell you that it will encompass more than just Domain logons. As much as you might not trust CNET's reporting, I don't think they would have made up the quote from Nash.
99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code,
fix one bug, compile it again...
Mike Nash, the general manager for Windows 2000 himself gives web access as his one specific example!
It's a shame that you were so off target with this first comment. Your analysis of how the licensing scheme affects Samba servers was excellent. I hope people moderate your comment way up - people need to be made aware about this.
99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code,
fix one bug, compile it again...
If you want a good doctor, I think that doctor Zimmer in Pittsburgh has a great reputation in this field. Everyone I talked to had used him, and everyone had perfect vision afterwards. It's not cheap - $2000 per eye.
That being said, I'm the only person I know of to have had a side-effect from the surgery. At night, my pupils open wider than average, allowing light through part of the untreated portion of my eye. This causes a little bit of glaring around bright objects at night.
But I have perfect vision in the daytime, and for night driving I have eyedrops that will cause my pupils to constrict, removing the glare (but also making everything appear dimmer). If I had known about this side effect, I may not have had the surgery done. I used to have awesome night vision, and now my night vision is terrible.
99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code,
fix one bug, compile it again...
There's an old saying: "One man's trash is another man's treasure". People like us love to play around (and get good use out of) older machines. We prove day in and day out that they can still be useful. My Commodore is still, in many ways, the best game machine I've ever seen.
But for most people, each generation of PC doesn't stand a chance of running the next generation of MS Windows/Offic, and they need to upgrade. The PC hardware market is both commoditized and making technical leaps at an astounding rate. This causes hardware to become real cheap, real fast.
And after something becomes cheap enough, not only can you not sell it to somebody, but it often becomes a pain to even give it away. At that point, it's disposable.
Please don't actually throw any hardware away. There are plenty of charitable organizations and even individuals who would love that old piece of equipment. Yes, it takes a little bit of effort on your part, but making someone happy can have its own rewards.
99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code,
fix one bug, compile it again...
For starters, Christians believe that God has given each and every one of them "free will". That is, God is the ultimate supporter of the idea of Freedom of the individual! He lets us do as we please, and it is up to us to do what is right.
Many will argue that the United States, among other things, was founded on the idea of Freedom of Religion. And indeed, you'll find people practising all sorts of religions there.
I think it's ignorant at best and disingenous at worst to state that the concept of Freedom and the belief of Religion do not "get along".
99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code,
fix one bug, compile it again...