I can see the RIAA pushing to incorporate tax fraud into the DMCA: "Well, you downloaded 1,500 MP3s at a value of $23.18 each, but didn't pay any sales tax on them. That's a mandatory extra 8 years!"
We did that unofficially at my previous tech support gig. The entries looked like:
Have talked to user 6 times via relay service. You will want to stab yourself before you've finished telling the relay operator how to get into the network control panel.
They all meant well, sure, but providing tech support to someone who's not a computer expert via someone who thinks a TTY is spiffy is an exercise in sadomasochism.
Deaf people would never stand for such unequal treatment.
I'm sympathetic, honest, but to play Devil's Advocate, how is that equal access? I can't get free translation service to call someone who speaks a different language, so why should your boyfriend get unlimited access to such a free service?
Having said that, I can think of a few legitimate reasons why, but I wonder what the "official" answer is. What do TTY advocates tell people who feel that they shouldn't have to pay to support that service?
Second, once you have the device configured properly, you should back up your configuration with TFTP or over the console to make recovery easy. This way, even if the device itself is fried, you can just dump your config onto a replacement unit and get on with your day.
Exactly. I'd tried "we don't have a backup of the router config" pretty much the same as "we don't have a backup of the webserver" when deciding how badly I'd have to lart the respective administrator. Even little home routers often have the ability to transfer their configs, even if just via their web interface.
so that one instance invalidates the 95% of the time that drivers automatically work under Windows
I use Debian with udev and hotplug (which are quickly becoming defaults). When I boot my computer, it automatically finds and configures everything I have attached to it. When I plug in my USB palm, it loads the appropriate module so that Kpilot can sync with it. When I plug in a keychain drive, it loads the appropriate module and mounts it. All of my printers worked with the drivers shipped with CUPS. I plugged a PCMCIA NIC into my laptop, and it beeped after it loaded the driver and configured the network. My sound card Just Works. My USB mouse Just Works.
Why do people still think that Linux is in 1997? I know that there are some annoying driver problems, just as there are in Windows, but the vast majority of hardware I've come across does the right thing without intervention.
And a pet peeve: Why do all kids' programs require the CD to be present?
It's the same for Windows, but a little less convenient to work around. I bought a CDROM emulator and used it to rip the kids' games into compressed image files that get stored on a Samba server. Then, I wrote a little batch script that I can put an icon on, and when the kids double-click it, it loads the image file with the same name as itself.
Since most of their CDs are autorun, all they have to do is double-click the icon for the game they want to play, and it starts running automatically. They have about 20 games at their fingertips without any kid-error-prone CD swapping.
There's more than one way to skin that particular cat.
What modifications are needed to it in the first place?
That's the argument I hear from DJB fans, too. The modifications can be as simple as telling it to look for config files in the place that a particular OS keeps them, rather than where the application thinks they should go. Now, IANAPineExpert, but imagine that it wants link against something in/usr/lib, but on a particular OS, that library is in/usr/local/lib. Patching the system to look in the latter directory may be enough to violate the terms of distribution, making it illegal for the vendor to supply a binary copy.
Sure, they can provide a "tracker" to download, patch, and compile the source. However, that implies having a working compiler and the development package for every dependency, which makes it troublesome for anyone who wants to provide the program on a shared machine where they don't want the users to have access to a compiler (and yes, there are systems like that).
That's why this is more than just pettiness. The terms of the license may be difficult or impossible to follow by a vendor, even if they're acceptable to the end users. In this case, that's why Mutt is wildly popular but few people ever mention using Pine anymore.
And no, I don't use Mutt. Gnus makes them all obsolete.;-)
818,181 votes? Funny how those numerals translated to HA HA HA in alpha characters
That number is fishy, but not because it can be made to map to "HAHAHA". You could also observe that 8+1+8+1+8+1 = 27 = 3^3, but that doesn't hint that it was written be a Jehovah-loving Kabbalist.
Sometimes, to paraphrase Freud, a number is just a number.
How is that "misplaced zealotry"? That's obeying the law. It is not technically legal to ship an MP3 player if you haven't paid the royalties, and I strongly doubt that anyone from the XMMS group has cut a check to the Frauenhoefer (sp?) Institute.
Besides, a few distros exist for the explicit purpose of shipping entirely Free systems; Debian is the largest, and Fedora seems to be one as well. If you don't agree with their policies, then don't install them, but don't criticize them for sticking with the rules that they set for themselves.
A highly efficient water pump, designed by rocket scientists, functioning in the middle of the Gobi desert
...would quickly become a local violence maxima. Since it would probably be the most valuable resource for miles, can you even imagine how much power that the one who controls it would have over people who would want to use it? Can you imagine what people would do to ensure that they were the ones with that control?
So, now you have a highly efficient water pump guarded by the UN to keep the locals from killing each other.
By your theory, if only we would ship grain to west Africa, people wouldn't have to starve anymore. I didn't think that anyone still believed that the world was that simple.
Well, yeah, but it's written in assembler on an ISA with instructions like:
SORTALPHAFIELDTHREE - sort the first $CX records, beginning at DX, alphabetically, based on the third ^Z-separated string. CALCULATEPI - stuff the value of PI, to $CX places, into AX FAXBOMB - establish a 2400/8N1 connect to AMD's fax line and sent $CX pages of "black"
If you can't write a virus in 8KB on Intel assembler, then you ain't a k0d34.
To me the authors are vandals not revolutionaries, and may have ensured WMA becomes the standard.
Then I'm glad your opinion doesn't count for anything. I like and respect what Apple is doing with iTunes as much as the next person, but they haven't been getting my money because I have no way to play their music on my platform of choice. I personally don't care what the license/contract/whatever is that I have to agree to; if I pay someone to listen to music, then I'll use whatever tool is available to hear it wherever I darn well want, whether the store approves or not. It's my song, morally if not legally.
WMA the standard because "FairPlay" is cracked? Sure, and DivX will become the standard DVD format because CSS was cracked.
Careful there. According to their license description page, while the player itself may be under an OSI-approved license, it appears that their codecs are not:
RealAudio/RealVideo Porting License - for your convenience, this porting and optimization license gives you source code access to portions of the Helix platform which haven't been open sourced, such as RealAudio and RealVideo.
Unless there's another mention on their side of an Open Source codec and they just haven't updated this page yet, it sounds like there is still no Open Source player for Real Media files. More accurately, there's an Open Source player that can accept proprietary executable plugins to decode Real's closed streams.
Whether this is acceptable or not is up to each user. Although I wouldn't touch it, some people may be comfortable with this arrangement. However, it still isn't Open Source in any reasonable sense.
What I really don't understand is why people insist on using closed media servers when there are viable free solutions. So Real threw them a bone by waiving the license fee for a while for some goodwill advertising - why are people impressed with getting something for free that they don't have to be paying for in the first place?
I understand (and sometimes make) the argument that "gratis" doesn't always mean "cheap", since someone has to run the system and in this setting you'd probably have to pay them to do it. Still, the whole reason I love listening to these guys so much is that they are the alpha geeks of the automotive mechanic world. It's not like Tom and Ray are a couple of guys who tinker with cars in their back yard and have no technology background.
Real Player doesn't come with Windows XP, so you can't use the argument that you don't want to make your users install additional software, since they'll have to anyway. The official answer from NPR is that
While other media types may offer technical advantages or less restrictive licenses, the conversion and storage of audio files requires considerable time and resources.
although I'm not quite ready to believe that compressing to Real or WMA format is less costly that compressing to Vorbis.
- process hanging and has 50 children: well, see, only Unix is retarded enough to need that. In Windows the Task Manager already shows me whole programs, not 10,000 individual threads, and killing a program automatically also terminates its spawned threads.
How... ham-fisted. If you honestly think that, for example, reloading your webserver process because a single query had hung is better than being able to kill a single Apache thread, then I don't know what else we have to talk about. Wow.
But many of my computers have had names from LoTR. I guess that kinda marks me as a geek, doesn't it?
Don't take this wrong, but it marks you as a not-particularly-original geek. I mean, how many tens of thousands of "gandalf"s and "frodo"s do you think are on the 'net right now? There are a lot of worthy scifi/fantasy novels that can be mined for hostnames - why pick the obvious three?
On the other hand, my home PC is "pooh", my server is "kanga", and my firewall is "gopher" (he digs tunnels). When I see "tigger" scrolling across a log file on a random server, I know that my wife is online - you just don't see that many Winnie The Pooh characters around.
...which is why my dual-boot PC (WinXP and Debian) is named "janus". I have to leave Windows on it because I have to run some proprietary stuff every third month or so, so that seemed like a very appropriate hostname.
Since Microsoft had to go and ruin my perfectly good name for a dual-boot system, I guess I'll have to re-christen it. How does "tainted" or "infected" sound?
However, I live in a small town in Nebraska. I don't make Austin or Valley wages, but I certainly make more than the average for where I live. It's a quiet, safe community where you can buy a 4,600 sq ft house in a good neighborhood for well under $200,000. Non-dotcom salaries can go a long way.:)
I'm not sure I'd even try for something that was 'web developer', just 'cause of some ego things I have, also because it sounds like it would be too simple work.
That's an very easy trap to fall into. Remember, though: it never hurts to ask.:)
That does sound very cool. Does it seem long-term?
Definitely. The company's been in business for 35 years, and just bought a new building to accomodate all of the new people they've had to hire to keep up with growth.
'Course, the problem is finding how to get a gig like that. I would love to be the do-it-all coder w/ lite sysadmin for some random company--it's so easy to be the continual hero in that situation:-)
Actually, there's another IT guy here that predates me. Most of the network consists of Windows servers and clients, and he manages all of that. I run the Unix services, and internal and external websites. We get along great, so I have someone fun to banter with ("That wouldn't have crashed if it were on Unix." "Oh yeah? Is that the OS you buy at Wal-Mart?").
Any advice, how did you get that gig?
I tracked the classified ads religiously. The ad was for a web developer, which isn't exactly what I want to do for the rest of my life, but it's something I'm good at and have experience with. In the interview, it turned out that the website was actually a lightweight frontend to the company's database system, and that the real job was making a clean, well-designed interface to that system. Web development solely extends to what's necessary to keep that system running, and the rest of my time involves automating a lot of annoying tasks that everyone hated doing.
I consider myself incredibly lucky, as my boss basically gave me free reign over the resources I need to do my job. He's very technologically clueful, which means that he understands why I ask for the things I do. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never does.
Just keep looking. There are good jobs out there that don't involve scammy dotcom business plans.
Slashdot Mirror
It worked on Capone...
Operator reads: "I am the nephew of rich General Hooya..."
Operator says: "He says *coughbullshit* he's the nephew of rich General Hooya *snicker*..."
We did that unofficially at my previous tech support gig. The entries looked like:
They all meant well, sure, but providing tech support to someone who's not a computer expert via someone who thinks a TTY is spiffy is an exercise in sadomasochism.I'm sympathetic, honest, but to play Devil's Advocate, how is that equal access? I can't get free translation service to call someone who speaks a different language, so why should your boyfriend get unlimited access to such a free service?
Having said that, I can think of a few legitimate reasons why, but I wonder what the "official" answer is. What do TTY advocates tell people who feel that they shouldn't have to pay to support that service?
Nifty! Thanks for the tip.
Exactly. I'd tried "we don't have a backup of the router config" pretty much the same as "we don't have a backup of the webserver" when deciding how badly I'd have to lart the respective administrator. Even little home routers often have the ability to transfer their configs, even if just via their web interface.
I use Debian with udev and hotplug (which are quickly becoming defaults). When I boot my computer, it automatically finds and configures everything I have attached to it. When I plug in my USB palm, it loads the appropriate module so that Kpilot can sync with it. When I plug in a keychain drive, it loads the appropriate module and mounts it. All of my printers worked with the drivers shipped with CUPS. I plugged a PCMCIA NIC into my laptop, and it beeped after it loaded the driver and configured the network. My sound card Just Works. My USB mouse Just Works.
Why do people still think that Linux is in 1997? I know that there are some annoying driver problems, just as there are in Windows, but the vast majority of hardware I've come across does the right thing without intervention.
It's the same for Windows, but a little less convenient to work around. I bought a CDROM emulator and used it to rip the kids' games into compressed image files that get stored on a Samba server. Then, I wrote a little batch script that I can put an icon on, and when the kids double-click it, it loads the image file with the same name as itself.
Since most of their CDs are autorun, all they have to do is double-click the icon for the game they want to play, and it starts running automatically. They have about 20 games at their fingertips without any kid-error-prone CD swapping.
There's more than one way to skin that particular cat.
One word: appendix. Thanks for playing!
That's the argument I hear from DJB fans, too. The modifications can be as simple as telling it to look for config files in the place that a particular OS keeps them, rather than where the application thinks they should go. Now, IANAPineExpert, but imagine that it wants link against something in /usr/lib, but on a particular OS, that library is in /usr/local/lib. Patching the system to look in the latter directory may be enough to violate the terms of distribution, making it illegal for the vendor to supply a binary copy.
Sure, they can provide a "tracker" to download, patch, and compile the source. However, that implies having a working compiler and the development package for every dependency, which makes it troublesome for anyone who wants to provide the program on a shared machine where they don't want the users to have access to a compiler (and yes, there are systems like that).
That's why this is more than just pettiness. The terms of the license may be difficult or impossible to follow by a vendor, even if they're acceptable to the end users. In this case, that's why Mutt is wildly popular but few people ever mention using Pine anymore.
And no, I don't use Mutt. Gnus makes them all obsolete. ;-)
That number is fishy, but not because it can be made to map to "HAHAHA". You could also observe that 8+1+8+1+8+1 = 27 = 3^3, but that doesn't hint that it was written be a Jehovah-loving Kabbalist.
Sometimes, to paraphrase Freud, a number is just a number.
Besides, a few distros exist for the explicit purpose of shipping entirely Free systems; Debian is the largest, and Fedora seems to be one as well. If you don't agree with their policies, then don't install them, but don't criticize them for sticking with the rules that they set for themselves.
...would quickly become a local violence maxima. Since it would probably be the most valuable resource for miles, can you even imagine how much power that the one who controls it would have over people who would want to use it? Can you imagine what people would do to ensure that they were the ones with that control?
So, now you have a highly efficient water pump guarded by the UN to keep the locals from killing each other.
By your theory, if only we would ship grain to west Africa, people wouldn't have to starve anymore. I didn't think that anyone still believed that the world was that simple.
Then I'm glad your opinion doesn't count for anything. I like and respect what Apple is doing with iTunes as much as the next person, but they haven't been getting my money because I have no way to play their music on my platform of choice. I personally don't care what the license/contract/whatever is that I have to agree to; if I pay someone to listen to music, then I'll use whatever tool is available to hear it wherever I darn well want, whether the store approves or not. It's my song, morally if not legally.
WMA the standard because "FairPlay" is cracked? Sure, and DivX will become the standard DVD format because CSS was cracked.
Careful there. According to their license description page, while the player itself may be under an OSI-approved license, it appears that their codecs are not:
Unless there's another mention on their side of an Open Source codec and they just haven't updated this page yet, it sounds like there is still no Open Source player for Real Media files. More accurately, there's an Open Source player that can accept proprietary executable plugins to decode Real's closed streams.Whether this is acceptable or not is up to each user. Although I wouldn't touch it, some people may be comfortable with this arrangement. However, it still isn't Open Source in any reasonable sense.
I understand (and sometimes make) the argument that "gratis" doesn't always mean "cheap", since someone has to run the system and in this setting you'd probably have to pay them to do it. Still, the whole reason I love listening to these guys so much is that they are the alpha geeks of the automotive mechanic world. It's not like Tom and Ray are a couple of guys who tinker with cars in their back yard and have no technology background.
Real Player doesn't come with Windows XP, so you can't use the argument that you don't want to make your users install additional software, since they'll have to anyway. The official answer from NPR is that
although I'm not quite ready to believe that compressing to Real or WMA format is less costly that compressing to Vorbis.If he uses Mathematica for his "real" website, I wonder if he blogs with Octave?
I just realized that any geek cred I thought I had was just an illusion. I don't ever want to hear jokes about Emacs again. Understand?
How... ham-fisted. If you honestly think that, for example, reloading your webserver process because a single query had hung is better than being able to kill a single Apache thread, then I don't know what else we have to talk about. Wow.
Don't take this wrong, but it marks you as a not-particularly-original geek. I mean, how many tens of thousands of "gandalf"s and "frodo"s do you think are on the 'net right now? There are a lot of worthy scifi/fantasy novels that can be mined for hostnames - why pick the obvious three?
On the other hand, my home PC is "pooh", my server is "kanga", and my firewall is "gopher" (he digs tunnels). When I see "tigger" scrolling across a log file on a random server, I know that my wife is online - you just don't see that many Winnie The Pooh characters around.
Since Microsoft had to go and ruin my perfectly good name for a dual-boot system, I guess I'll have to re-christen it. How does "tainted" or "infected" sound?
However, I live in a small town in Nebraska. I don't make Austin or Valley wages, but I certainly make more than the average for where I live. It's a quiet, safe community where you can buy a 4,600 sq ft house in a good neighborhood for well under $200,000. Non-dotcom salaries can go a long way. :)
That's an very easy trap to fall into. Remember, though: it never hurts to ask. :)
Definitely. The company's been in business for 35 years, and just bought a new building to accomodate all of the new people they've had to hire to keep up with growth.
'Course, the problem is finding how to get a gig like that. I would love to be the do-it-all coder w/ lite sysadmin for some random company--it's so easy to be the continual hero in that situation :-)
Actually, there's another IT guy here that predates me. Most of the network consists of Windows servers and clients, and he manages all of that. I run the Unix services, and internal and external websites. We get along great, so I have someone fun to banter with ("That wouldn't have crashed if it were on Unix." "Oh yeah? Is that the OS you buy at Wal-Mart?").
Any advice, how did you get that gig?
I tracked the classified ads religiously. The ad was for a web developer, which isn't exactly what I want to do for the rest of my life, but it's something I'm good at and have experience with. In the interview, it turned out that the website was actually a lightweight frontend to the company's database system, and that the real job was making a clean, well-designed interface to that system. Web development solely extends to what's necessary to keep that system running, and the rest of my time involves automating a lot of annoying tasks that everyone hated doing.
I consider myself incredibly lucky, as my boss basically gave me free reign over the resources I need to do my job. He's very technologically clueful, which means that he understands why I ask for the things I do. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never does.
Just keep looking. There are good jobs out there that don't involve scammy dotcom business plans.