Sounds like an effective protest would to put a *.au domain check in as many systems as possible. (Unix of course.) Then they would at least have to pay for AOL accounts like all the other script kiddies.
In school I was taught that australia was founded by criminals. I am glad to see they are keeping the tradition alive.
Back in the bad old days of Netscape tech support, it was (and still is to my knowledge) done by an outsourcing company. In those days it was called "Corporate Software". Then they overextended and got bought out by R.R.Donnely and renamed "Stream".
Now what does the word "Stream" conjure up for you? Well, judging by the way they treat their employees, it has little to do with "mountain air" and "sunshine". More like "a glittering shaft of gold splashing down out of the heavens" or what happens after you drink too much thundertrain 20/20 on a Saturday night.
Their unofficial company slogan is "What end of the Stream are you on?".
I think the problem with that is the limitations of bootable CDs. You are limited (incredibly) on the size of your boot image. (The size is about that of a standard floppy.) It can be done, but getting a tight enough kernel to recognise everything is a big pain. Video card and monitor support is still a big problem.
It would make it simpler that the current installs, but it would also be very slow. Hard drives are faster than cd-roms and most games require alot of data from the drive. Running everything off the rom is going to slow things WAY down.
Besides, if you have everything based off the cd-rom, where are you going to save your games?
I was planning an order with Amazon. I guess I will spend it at Barnes and Noble or Fatbrain or another retailer that does not abuse the patent system.
Ideas are not property! Just because Big Company A came up with Idea Z and paid money to the patent office does not mean that they were first to come up with the idea, that it is not obvious, or that someone else could easly come up with the same idea. They seem to believe that just because they exist and employ alot of people that they have a right to rope off a chunk of "idea space" as their own private property. I refuse to do business with such a company if I can at all help it. (Especially when that company is so obvious and blatent about it.) I spend about $1,000 a year on books. I will not do it with people who think that they own a part of my brain.
Make your views known with Amazon. Write them and tell them that you won't buy books from them until they drop their silly patent.
Maybe at those rates I could sell "ctrl-alt-del.com" to Microsoft. (They make enough use from those keystrokes.) Of course, they really need "clueserver.org". (And, yes, I actually own both of those...) To get good domain names nowadays, you just have to be a bit creative. (Until someone trademarks your idea, then you are screwed.)
But remember, the net is not for the users, it is for big corporations and marketing.
This is just the finding of fact. There are still rullings of whether they broke anti-trust laws and what to do if they did.
It is not over yet.
As for the pro-corporate types out there who are saying how this hurts capitalism...
There is *NO*SUCH*THING* in this country! Competition is by government fiat. Microsoft enjoys alot of protection from the government, especially when it comes to copyrights, trademarks and patents. They can get cops to break down your door on suspicions of "Software Piracy".
Absolute Free Markets do not exist anywhere on the planet. If they did, Microsoft would be in a much different position. They would not be able to hide their APIs as easy, because reverse engeneering would be legal. They would not be able to threaten people with the power of lawyers backed up with the power of the state.
I view this battle as one bully against another. I don't like either side, but I dislike the Microsoft side more because they have less accountability in the long run.
The sue happy nature of the world's lawyers is getting out of hand.
Since the US Government is under the influence of China, I suggest we adopt another practice from them.
All lawyers, opon passing the bar, will be required to have their genitalia removed and placed in a jar which is to be hung around their necks. (Like the Imperial Court Eunichs of old.) This will accomplish two things. First, it will prevent lawyers from reproducing. Second, it will make it obvious who is and is not a lawyer.
I bet that you will find a whole lot less lawyers after this plan goes into effect.
I have not tried the latest version of Eudora with Wine. The last time it wanted all sorts of MFC dlls. I will have to try it again.
I have tried to get Qualcomm to do a Linux port. No answer yet. The current version of Eudora is VERY nice. (The multi-threading is sweet!) This is something I would pay for all over again. Anything to get away from the great beast of Redmond.
This just goes to show how myth and urban legend can be blown up into a big lifethreatening "problem".
Did any of these so-called reporters try and check their "facts" with anyone who had actually written code back then?
A couble of points:
1) Any program that uses 9999 to represent 9/9/99 will be pretty useless for tracking dates. Does 11199 represent Jan 1, 1999 or Nov 11th, 1999? I guess they did not think that part out...
2) If number of days from the start of the year is used for the "99" you can get that date, but that day passed sometime in April.
3) The panic-mongers are trying to claim that 4 nines were used for und of file markers. When I took Cobol back in the early 80s, it was nine nines. Sounds like someone took something they heard a long time ago and tried to make it fit into the Y2K scare as something else to panic about.
Date problems are not new. The Pick/OS stores dates as the number of days past Jan 1, 1970. Some reports and programs had problems when that date went from four digits to five. It was noticed almost imediatly, it was fixed, and life went on. Most people never knew it happened.
As computers become more common in day to day life, more news "storys" will be based on misunderstood and overblown rumor and fear. Don't buy into it.
This is not a new thing. Various taxing authorities have been trying to get into the wallets of programmers for a long time. They come up with various excuses like "public safety" or "reliability", but when it comes right down to it it all equates to MONEY.
Government certification and licensing of software professionals is a *BAD* idea.
First of all, do you standardize on one coding methodology or many? How do you keep "fad-ism" from creeping into the tests? What do you test for?
Coding is not like building a bridge. Bridge building is pretty standardized. There is a small number of ways to build it so it does not fall down. Programming requires a much greater range of knowledge and problem solving capability. It requires that the programmer be able to understand the problem and convert it to something that functions depending on a number of specifications and design parameters. That is something that is difficult to test for.
I also see this as the start of the effort to control programmers in some rather nasty ways. (Sorry if I have such a distrust of Government, but so far my distrust has been bourne out.)
"When you have them by the paycheck, their hearts and minds will follow."
Currently local, state and federal governments are on a jihad to control anything that threatens then or could possibly threaten them. Programmers are viewed from time to time as one of those threats. I would not want to see them have yet another tool to use in the war on creativity and free thought.
I would hate to see programming become yet another overregulated profession with licensing fees and arbitrary tests and rules.
Those who claim that you can hire some 16 year old to admin NT have no clue as to what they are talking about.
It takes alot more work to admin NT, both from an educational standpoint and a time standpoint. It is not just "point, click, and reboot".
To properly admin NT, you need to understand the way Microsoft does things. You have to have the secret and arcane knowledge of registry hacks, incompatibilities, unfixed bugs, and the like. You have to be able to config and fix these things via the GUI interface in most cases or not at all.
You also get to deal with "Master Browsers" (Which are assigned the same way the Medaeval Italians elected Popes), PDCs and BDCs and a whole host of weird concepts invented by Microsoft to fill MSCE classes.
And it just gets worse with the Terminal Server version. There you get to deal with roaming profiles, apps that were never designed to be used multiuser, and a whole host of bugs.
The idea that NT is easier to admin is just another lie. If you don't believe me, ask an NT admin.
Imagine a children's game interface pitched to adults.
It was incredibly insulting and required more resources than most novice users had. (As well as hoping that their video card was set to something more than 16 colors.) If they needed it, they could not install it. If they could install it, they did not need it.
True Story about MS Bob:
There is a program locally called "Town Hall". They have an audience and guests and try to stir up what passes for controversy in this town.
They had a show on computers. One of the guests was a marketing flack from Microsoft promoting MS Bob.
At one point the MS flack said (and I am *not* making this up) "The reason the name 'Bob' was chosen was because it was a sexually ambivelent name". I immediatly asked in a very loud voice "How many drag queens do you know named Bob?". They whole audience broke up laughing. Not to anyone's surprise, they deleted my comment from the program.
To make it even more fun, the local station delayed airing the show for a couple of months due to a flood or storm or something of the sort. By that time, the local software stores were remaindering Bob at discount prices. (The local Egghead Software claimed that they only sold four.)
You would think that someone responsible for such a fiasco would be fired or worse? Nope.
The manager responsible for Microsoft Bob is now Mrs. Bill Gates.
Shows how much attention Bill pays to quality...
Tom Christianson has good reason to be pissed
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Feature:Free Linux
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· Score: 1
Tom has a good reason to be pissed. RMS seems to think that the Perl Docs should be redistibutable by any means nessisary. Tom is sick of people copying his work without permission and republishing it in their books on Perl.
What RMS seems to want is REPUBLISHABLE free text, without having to be concerned with who wrote it or how those people support themselves. Much of how Tom supports himself is through his writing. If someone said that you should work for free against your will, it would stick in your craw as well.
RMS's biggest problem is that his ego is taking over. He is trying to take credit for things that he is only minorly responsible for. The FSF is not responsible for most of Linux. I also wonder how much of the FSF code was written by RMS himself.
If there is a cult leader in the Open Source community, it is not Linus or Larry Wall (even though that may be on his business cards) or Eric Raymond. It is RMS. Cult leaders prey on the delusions and gulibility of their followers. So, it seems, does RMS.
If anyone had actually watched the hearings on the much hyped "Information Super Highway", they would have realized that it was actually a national cable system! They were going to use the huge volume of bandwidth so they could start movies every 15 minutes!
I really wish that the media would stop treating Gore as if he were some sort of "Wired Intelectual".
Come to think of it, did'nt Gore also claim to be the inspiration to the book "Love Story" was based on? What next? Is he going to claim he invented the printing press and velcro?
I can see why they are tightening up access to the information.
I have a couple of domains registered. One of the domains has a company name that ONLY appears in the DNS records. I have been recieving snail mail from companies that have been "mining" the DNS record for thier own slimey purposes. It really pisses me off how many corporate bottom-feeders consider the net their own way of "Making Money Fast".
And people wonder why I hate sales people so much.
This must be a reaction to the legalization of crypto in France. The French seem to fear free expression so much that they have to have a way to stamp it out. Since the leadership has gotten past the crypto boogieman, now they will use the "ISP as guardian of our morals" threat.
If upheld, it will do alot of damage to the smaller French ISPs. (Which may be what the French phone company wants in the first place...)
This is what happens when you have people who are ignorant about technology making rules about it.
All those Netscape cache files will be yet another thing to bust you for. (Along with having to maintain proof that you own every piece of software you have installed. I am lucky to find my CDs.)
What I expect it will do is just generate more contempt for the law and lawmakers and little else.
I have all three. I would go with "Advanced Perl" and the cookbook. The Unix Resource Guide is pretty pricy. It is useful, but not as much as the other books. (And the most useful parts are just printed versions of the various perl docs.)
Another recommended book is "mastering Regular Expressions" by Jeffrey E.F. Friedl. It explains regex for pretty much everything. (Not just Perl.) One of the most useful O'Reilly books out there.
I have seen a number of clips for the new Dilbert cartoon. What I seen does not impress me. The delivery of the lines was flat and not very funny. Hopefully it will not be like a giant office max commercial. I am not getting my hopes up.
Since it is on UPN, maybe they can do a Dilbert/Voyager crossover. (6 of 9 as the boss' domanatrix or something...)
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like an effective protest would to put a *.au domain check in as many systems as possible. (Unix of course.) Then they would at least have to pay for AOL accounts like all the other script kiddies.
In school I was taught that australia was founded by criminals. I am glad to see they are keeping the tradition alive.
Back in the bad old days of Netscape tech support, it was (and still is to my knowledge) done by an outsourcing company. In those days it was called "Corporate Software". Then they overextended and got bought out by R.R.Donnely and renamed "Stream".
Now what does the word "Stream" conjure up for you? Well, judging by the way they treat their employees, it has little to do with "mountain air" and "sunshine". More like "a glittering shaft of gold splashing down out of the heavens" or what happens after you drink too much thundertrain 20/20 on a Saturday night.
Their unofficial company slogan is "What end of the Stream are you on?".
I think the problem with that is the limitations of bootable CDs. You are limited (incredibly) on the size of your boot image. (The size is about that of a standard floppy.) It can be done, but getting a tight enough kernel to recognise everything is a big pain. Video card and monitor support is still a big problem.
It would make it simpler that the current installs, but it would also be very slow. Hard drives are faster than cd-roms and most games require alot of data from the drive. Running everything off the rom is going to slow things WAY down.
Besides, if you have everything based off the cd-rom, where are you going to save your games?
I was planning an order with Amazon. I guess I will spend it at Barnes and Noble or Fatbrain or another retailer that does not abuse the patent system.
Ideas are not property! Just because Big Company A came up with Idea Z and paid money to the patent office does not mean that they were first to come up with the idea, that it is not obvious, or that someone else could easly come up with the same idea. They seem to believe that just because they exist and employ alot of people that they have a right to rope off a chunk of "idea space" as their own private property. I refuse to do business with such a company if I can at all help it. (Especially when that company is so obvious and blatent about it.) I spend about $1,000 a year on books. I will not do it with people who think that they own a part of my brain.
Make your views known with Amazon. Write them and tell them that you won't buy books from them until they drop their silly patent.
Maybe at those rates I could sell "ctrl-alt-del.com" to Microsoft. (They make enough use from those keystrokes.) Of course, they really need "clueserver.org". (And, yes, I actually own both of those...) To get good domain names nowadays, you just have to be a bit creative. (Until someone trademarks your idea, then you are screwed.)
But remember, the net is not for the users, it is for big corporations and marketing.
Sigh.
This is just the finding of fact. There are still rullings of whether they broke anti-trust laws and what to do if they did.
It is not over yet.
As for the pro-corporate types out there who are saying how this hurts capitalism...
There is *NO*SUCH*THING* in this country! Competition is by government fiat. Microsoft enjoys alot of protection from the government, especially when it comes to copyrights, trademarks and patents. They can get cops to break down your door on suspicions of "Software Piracy".
Absolute Free Markets do not exist anywhere on the planet. If they did, Microsoft would be in a much different position. They would not be able to hide their APIs as easy, because reverse engeneering would be legal. They would not be able to threaten people with the power of lawyers backed up with the power of the state.
I view this battle as one bully against another. I don't like either side, but I dislike the Microsoft side more because they have less accountability in the long run.
The sue happy nature of the world's lawyers is getting out of hand.
Since the US Government is under the influence of China, I suggest we adopt another practice from them.
All lawyers, opon passing the bar, will be required to have their genitalia removed and placed in a jar which is to be hung around their necks. (Like the Imperial Court Eunichs of old.) This will accomplish two things. First, it will prevent lawyers from reproducing. Second, it will make it obvious who is and is not a lawyer.
I bet that you will find a whole lot less lawyers after this plan goes into effect.
I have not tried the latest version of Eudora with Wine. The last time it wanted all sorts of MFC dlls. I will have to try it again.
I have tried to get Qualcomm to do a Linux port. No answer yet. The current version of Eudora is VERY nice. (The multi-threading is sweet!) This is something I would pay for all over again. Anything to get away from the great beast of Redmond.
This just goes to show how myth and urban legend can be blown up into a big lifethreatening "problem".
Did any of these so-called reporters try and check their "facts" with anyone who had actually written code back then?
A couble of points:
1) Any program that uses 9999 to represent 9/9/99 will be pretty useless for tracking dates. Does 11199 represent Jan 1, 1999 or Nov 11th, 1999? I guess they did not think that part out...
2) If number of days from the start of the year is used for the "99" you can get that date, but that day passed sometime in April.
3) The panic-mongers are trying to claim that 4 nines were used for und of file markers. When I took Cobol back in the early 80s, it was nine nines. Sounds like someone took something they heard a long time ago and tried to make it fit into the Y2K scare as something else to panic about.
Date problems are not new. The Pick/OS stores dates as the number of days past Jan 1, 1970. Some reports and programs had problems when that date went from four digits to five. It was noticed almost imediatly, it was fixed, and life went on. Most people never knew it happened.
As computers become more common in day to day life, more news "storys" will be based on misunderstood and overblown rumor and fear. Don't buy into it.
They had to split it with the soundman.
"All power eminates from the barrel of a Gnu." - Chairman Richard "Mao Mixmaster" Stallman
Oregon is just in the process of selling off your genetic data to companies. (Not to mention all of the information on your drivers license...)
The reason Oregon does not do this is that they are too busy squabling over preventing Gay marriages and acting tough on crime.
This is not a new thing. Various taxing authorities have been trying to get into the wallets of programmers for a long time. They come up with various excuses like "public safety" or "reliability", but when it comes right down to it it all equates to MONEY.
Government certification and licensing of software professionals is a *BAD* idea.
First of all, do you standardize on one coding methodology or many? How do you keep "fad-ism" from creeping into the tests? What do you test for?
Coding is not like building a bridge. Bridge building is pretty standardized. There is a small number of ways to build it so it does not fall down. Programming requires a much greater range of knowledge and problem solving capability. It requires that the programmer be able to understand the problem and convert it to something that functions depending on a number of specifications and design parameters. That is something that is difficult to test for.
I also see this as the start of the effort to control programmers in some rather nasty ways. (Sorry if I have such a distrust of Government, but so far my distrust has been bourne out.)
"When you have them by the paycheck, their hearts and minds will follow."
Currently local, state and federal governments are on a jihad to control anything that threatens then or could possibly threaten them. Programmers are viewed from time to time as one of those threats. I would not want to see them have yet another tool to use in the war on creativity and free thought.
I would hate to see programming become yet another overregulated profession with licensing fees and arbitrary tests and rules.
The S/Wan code only works with the 2.0.x kernels. This means that if you use the other crypto hacks from ftp.kerneli.org, you are SOL.
The FreeS/Wan code needs to be ported to the 2.2.x tree as soon as possible.
Those who claim that you can hire some 16 year old to admin NT have no clue as to what they are talking about.
It takes alot more work to admin NT, both from an educational standpoint and a time standpoint. It is not just "point, click, and reboot".
To properly admin NT, you need to understand the way Microsoft does things. You have to have the secret and arcane knowledge of registry hacks, incompatibilities, unfixed bugs, and the like. You have to be able to config and fix these things via the GUI interface in most cases or not at all.
You also get to deal with "Master Browsers" (Which are assigned the same way the Medaeval Italians elected Popes), PDCs and BDCs and a whole host of weird concepts invented by Microsoft to fill MSCE classes.
And it just gets worse with the Terminal Server version. There you get to deal with roaming profiles, apps that were never designed to be used multiuser, and a whole host of bugs.
The idea that NT is easier to admin is just another lie. If you don't believe me, ask an NT admin.
Bob was a front-end to Windows 3.1.
Imagine a children's game interface pitched to adults.
It was incredibly insulting and required more resources than most novice users had. (As well as hoping that their video card was set to something more than 16 colors.) If they needed it, they could not install it. If they could install it, they did not need it.
True Story about MS Bob:
There is a program locally called "Town Hall". They have an audience and guests and try to stir up what passes for controversy in this town.
They had a show on computers. One of the guests was a marketing flack from Microsoft promoting MS Bob.
At one point the MS flack said (and I am *not* making this up) "The reason the name 'Bob' was chosen was because it was a sexually ambivelent name". I immediatly asked in a very loud voice "How many drag queens do you know named Bob?". They whole audience broke up laughing. Not to anyone's surprise, they deleted my comment from the program.
To make it even more fun, the local station delayed airing the show for a couple of months due to a flood or storm or something of the sort. By that time, the local software stores were remaindering Bob at discount prices. (The local Egghead Software claimed that they only sold four.)
You would think that someone responsible for such a fiasco would be fired or worse? Nope.
The manager responsible for Microsoft Bob is now Mrs. Bill Gates.
Shows how much attention Bill pays to quality...
Tom has a good reason to be pissed. RMS seems to think that the Perl Docs should be redistibutable by any means nessisary. Tom is sick of people copying his work without permission and republishing it in their books on Perl.
What RMS seems to want is REPUBLISHABLE free text, without having to be concerned with who wrote it or how those people support themselves. Much of how Tom supports himself is through his writing. If someone said that you should work for free against your will, it would stick in your craw as well.
RMS's biggest problem is that his ego is taking over. He is trying to take credit for things that he is only minorly responsible for. The FSF is not responsible for most of Linux. I also wonder how much of the FSF code was written by RMS himself.
If there is a cult leader in the Open Source community, it is not Linus or Larry Wall (even though that may be on his business cards) or Eric Raymond. It is RMS. Cult leaders prey on the delusions and gulibility of their followers. So, it seems, does RMS.
GNU this!
If anyone had actually watched the hearings on the much hyped "Information Super Highway", they would have realized that it was actually a national cable system! They were going to use the huge volume of bandwidth so they could start movies every 15 minutes!
I really wish that the media would stop treating Gore as if he were some sort of "Wired Intelectual".
Come to think of it, did'nt Gore also claim to be the inspiration to the book "Love Story" was based on? What next? Is he going to claim he invented the printing press and velcro?
I can see why they are tightening up access to the information.
I have a couple of domains registered. One of the domains has a company name that ONLY appears in the DNS records. I have been recieving snail mail from companies that have been "mining" the DNS record for thier own slimey purposes. It really pisses me off how many corporate bottom-feeders consider the net their own way of "Making Money Fast".
And people wonder why I hate sales people so much.
Well I guess "Tux Shampoo" is better than "Tux Medicated Pads".
Since most web viewing is to porn sites (according to national media), having web access in the john is quite apropreate.
This must be a reaction to the legalization of crypto in France. The French seem to fear free expression so much that they have to have a way to stamp it out. Since the leadership has gotten past the crypto boogieman, now they will use the "ISP as guardian of our morals" threat.
If upheld, it will do alot of damage to the smaller French ISPs. (Which may be what the French phone company wants in the first place...)
This is what happens when you have people who are ignorant about technology making rules about it.
All those Netscape cache files will be yet another thing to bust you for. (Along with having to maintain proof that you own every piece of software you have installed. I am lucky to find my CDs.)
What I expect it will do is just generate more contempt for the law and lawmakers and little else.
I have all three. I would go with "Advanced Perl" and the cookbook. The Unix Resource Guide is pretty pricy. It is useful, but not as much as the other books. (And the most useful parts are just printed versions of the various perl docs.)
Another recommended book is "mastering Regular Expressions" by Jeffrey E.F. Friedl. It explains regex for pretty much everything. (Not just Perl.) One of the most useful O'Reilly books out there.
I have seen a number of clips for the new Dilbert cartoon. What I seen does not impress me. The delivery of the lines was flat and not very funny. Hopefully it will not be like a giant office max commercial. I am not getting my hopes up.
Since it is on UPN, maybe they can do a Dilbert/Voyager crossover. (6 of 9 as the boss' domanatrix or something...)