We (the sysadmins) have had problems in the past with Tcl, mainly because it relies on being able to build stuff at "make install" time instead of normal "make" time, leading to messed up baked-in paths...:^/
With modern corporations, it's all a question of money. This guy comes along and offers to license his idea to them for, say, $50k (number completely made up). The company asks the lawyers how much it'll cost to grind the guy into a fine paste. If the lawyers give a number larger than $50k, then they "lose the bid" and the company settles instead of fighting.
You know that there are quite a few people who think nothing of running a 26 mile marathon, right?
I know that this is Slashdot and all, but the skeptics doubting the ability of anyone to walk quickly for more than a few minutes is really funny.
I walk about two miles to work and back every day. I've walked 15 miles without problems before. I'm overweight and can't lift much more than a 21" monitor. I can't run a block without getting winded. Only here would I be considered a model of physical fitness.
My legs can carry me at 5mph for hours. If the time difference between segway and walking (~20 minutes) in a 5 mile trip really matters that much, I'll drive.
This product is perfect for people who: -Need to travel 5-10 miles (any less and walking's less hassle and doesn't take much longer) -Are in enough of a hurry to use powered transport, but not so much of a hurry that they need to drive. -Are solvent enough to plunk down $5k IN ADDITION TO a car -Are environmentally conscious enough to bother using this instead of a car -Live in a flat area (hilly neighborhoods drastically cut battery life) -Live in an area that doesn't have regular rain or snow -Live in an area with either wide streets or well-maintained sidewalks -Can do their travelling in the daytime -Live in an area without a decent public transportation system -Lives in and travels to areas that provide a safe place to park a segway
Here in Pittsburgh, there are hills, it rains a lot, it gets dark early this time of year, the roads are narrow and the sidewalks are often cracked, we have a good bus system, and the places that are close enough to reach via a segway don't have any good places to park the thing. I could afford one, and I like the concept, but it's just too much hassle.
If they really want this thing to take off, they'll work with the parking authorities and malls to provide "segway locks" where people can leave their segways while they shop.
I can't say that I care too much about most file sharing, but Emusic's taking a gamble that I want to see succeed: they're offering fully unlocked music and relying on the integrity of their customers to prevent re-distribution.
Companies that trust their customers are rare. I'm not willing to abuse that trust. Otherwise, crap like Pressplay and Rhapsody will be all that's left.
I'm with Linus on the whole GNU/Linux naming joke. From this interview (he was talking about "lignux", which was the previous attempt by FSF fanboys to cash in on Linux, but it's the same idea)
There's a lot of GNU code out there, but it should stand on its own instead of trying to get a free ride on the Linux name recognition.
I _am_ very indebted to the gcc developers, who have made sure that there's a good high-quality compiler out there that everybody can use, but that doesn't really mean that they get to choose their own name for the system.
Your midwife doesn't select the name of your babies..
The RIAA's web site gets hacked so damned often that it's not really news. Well, okay, it is news, but it's news like "rained yesterday" or "somebody found another hole in IIS" or "CmdrTaco misspelled something."
With zephyr, you create a ~/.anyone file with a list of friends in it. Typing "znol" will give you a list of people on that list who are logged in to Zephyr. Any time someone on that list logs in or logs off, you get a zephyrgram telling you about it.
How's that different from an ICQ friends list again?
The point of moderation is not to reward or punish you for what you write. It's to act as a collective sieve so that not as many people have to read irrelevant posts.
The article was corrected. Therefore, there was no need for people to read posts bitching about the mistake in the article. I'm glad that some of the posts were marked down. I just wish they'd marked down the rest of them.
NetBSD is (as far as I know) the ONLY one of the BSDs that ships with NO open services in the default install.
Y'know how OpenBSD used to brag about "X years without a remote root exploit in the default install"? These days, it's NetBSD that carries the "longest since remote root in default" banner, and they'll continue to have it (though they're a bit to understated to brag about it) until OpenBSD turns off incoming SSH and RPC.
Think that's a silly argument? Check your nearest OpenBSD box. Is it running RPC? Does it need to be? Isn't "turn off unnecessary services" one of the fundamentals of securing a box?
Great. It's been submitted. Can anyone provide a bill number (the one that looks like H.R.12345.IH)?
I can find no mention of it on Thomas, and if I bug my representative without a bill number, his staff's just going to check the "misc. loon" box when I call.
I doubt that current drives are too slow to allow the simultaneous reading and writing of an mpeg stream, especially with a decent buffer on the driver. Write a few megs, read a few megs, repeat. Given the type of data (large compressed streamed files), you can do really effective readahead.
I know that I can read and write mpeg2 streams to an NFS mounted disk over 100MB/s ethernet without problems. Over IDE hardly even seems like a challenge, and it's hardly the sort of thing that'd justify expensive proprietary hardware.
each of our rights to safety outweighs our rights to travel. You do not have a "right" to safety. Such a thing would be impossible to ever offer. You do have a right to travel, on the other hand.
There was a stink about this on Prodigy back before this newfangled internet thing. The classical music fans were pissed because discussions about the song "Cum Sancto Spiritu" (roughly "with the holy spirit") were being banned.
On opening day, I bought Warcraft III. Turns out my 16 meg Radeon doesn't play it perfectly smoothly, so I may end up buying a new video card by the end of the year for my dual G4.
I wouldn't be so sure that it's your video card. Warcraft III plays fine at 1024x768 with all the options on on my Duron 800 with an old Voodoo 3 card. On my wife's new-ish iBook, 640x480 is still a little jerky with all of the options on.
I suspect a lack of Mac optimization from Blizzard.
Personally, I plan on buying it the day the linux client binaries are released. I want CompUSA (or wherever) to be wondering why the hell NWN sold an extra 10k copies that day.
I used to have a job where management was incredibly clueless. We'd joke about trading our boss for the PHB from Dilbert because it'd be a step up. Eventually, this frustrated me enough that I left and found a job elsewhere.
At the new job, I had a new manager. He was a decent manager, and I accomplished a lot more than I had before. Clearly, I was vindicated: without the clueless manager, I was able to do more.
Then, due to a reorganization, I ended up working for a truly amazing manager. The guy really wanted to be sure that I was doing work that I found important and interesting. He's constantly asking around for ways that he can improve. I learned something pretty quickly: I wasn't the amazing employee that I thought I was. I was just better than some of my clueless coworkers. I learned that because this guy was constantly asking about my goals and what I wanted to get out of the project and the organization. I realized that I really did have a poor understanding of the organizations larger goals. Because of him, I really do feel like I've become more productive and I've gained insight into the big picture. Ironically, thanks to better management, I'm approaching the level of skill that I (incorrectly) thought that I had before.
There's nothing wrong with borrwing the CDs for a version of IRIX your machine can rightfully use.
This is like saying "There's nothing wrong with using Windows 2000 on a machine that came with 98 if it also came with a Microsoft keyboard and mouse." You can justify it however you like, but it's still theft if you don't have a license.
I have an Indigo 2 at home that was going to be thrown away. I have the hardware, the original OS CDs (5.3, I think), and a transfer of ownership statement from the original owner. SGI still wants $600 to bring the machine up to 6.5 legally.
I decided to use another OS (NetBSD) that could be installed legally instead of paying SGI or stealing their software.
SuSE isn't bad, but I've found the following problems so far:
SuSE 8.0 is missing the gtk-config script. For that matter, I'm pretty sure (can't check now) that there's no gtk-devel. Yes, the gtk lib is there, but if you have any apps that you need to build, it's a little bit annoying.
The online updater is screwy. When I first tried, I got the "bad GPG sig" message talked about in the article. When I tried again, it wouldn't even try to download the updates. A detailed problem report (submitted via YaST2, nice) has not been answered in close to a week.
It looks like KDE 3 assumes that root can write to a user's home directory. I use NFS at home (and map root to nobody). KDE 3 doesn't like that at all. We use AFS at work. KDE 3 doesn't like that any better. Not SuSE's fault (same problems with RH 7.3 and with KDE 3 compiled myself).
On my laptop, YaST2 won't recognize my Xircom modem/ethernet card or my Lucent 802.11b card. The modules aren't even listed in their setup program. Tricky business, I know, but Red Hat handles it.
Wait until next year when they want $75/person to maintain the licenses that you have now.
It happened to the university where I work. They played hardball until they found out that we were serious about converting all of the PC labs to Linux/Star Office the moment the licenses expired. We had a "one disk" solution for students, too.
Slashdot Mirror
We (the sysadmins) have had problems in the past with Tcl, mainly because it relies on being able to build stuff at "make install" time instead of normal "make" time, leading to messed up baked-in paths... :^/
With modern corporations, it's all a question of money. This guy comes along and offers to license his idea to them for, say, $50k (number completely made up). The company asks the lawyers how much it'll cost to grind the guy into a fine paste. If the lawyers give a number larger than $50k, then they "lose the bid" and the company settles instead of fighting.
You know that there are quite a few people who think nothing of running a 26 mile marathon, right?
I know that this is Slashdot and all, but the skeptics doubting the ability of anyone to walk quickly for more than a few minutes is really funny.
I walk about two miles to work and back every day. I've walked 15 miles without problems before. I'm overweight and can't lift much more than a 21" monitor. I can't run a block without getting winded. Only here would I be considered a model of physical fitness.
My legs can carry me at 5mph for hours. If the time difference between segway and walking (~20 minutes) in a 5 mile trip really matters that much, I'll drive.
This product is perfect for people who:
-Need to travel 5-10 miles (any less and walking's less hassle and doesn't take much longer)
-Are in enough of a hurry to use powered transport, but not so much of a hurry that they need to drive.
-Are solvent enough to plunk down $5k IN ADDITION TO a car
-Are environmentally conscious enough to bother using this instead of a car
-Live in a flat area (hilly neighborhoods drastically cut battery life)
-Live in an area that doesn't have regular rain or snow
-Live in an area with either wide streets or well-maintained sidewalks
-Can do their travelling in the daytime
-Live in an area without a decent public transportation system
-Lives in and travels to areas that provide a safe place to park a segway
Here in Pittsburgh, there are hills, it rains a lot, it gets dark early this time of year, the roads are narrow and the sidewalks are often cracked, we have a good bus system, and the places that are close enough to reach via a segway don't have any good places to park the thing. I could afford one, and I like the concept, but it's just too much hassle.
If they really want this thing to take off, they'll work with the parking authorities and malls to provide "segway locks" where people can leave their segways while they shop.
Emusic doesn't allow redistribution.
I can't say that I care too much about most file sharing, but Emusic's taking a gamble that I want to see succeed: they're offering fully unlocked music and relying on the integrity of their customers to prevent re-distribution.
Companies that trust their customers are rare. I'm not willing to abuse that trust. Otherwise, crap like Pressplay and Rhapsody will be all that's left.
The RIAA's web site gets hacked so damned often that it's not really news. Well, okay, it is news, but it's news like "rained yesterday" or "somebody found another hole in IIS" or "CmdrTaco misspelled something."
With zephyr, you create a ~/.anyone file with a list of friends in it. Typing "znol" will give you a list of people on that list who are logged in to Zephyr. Any time someone on that list logs in or logs off, you get a zephyrgram telling you about it.
How's that different from an ICQ friends list again?
The point of moderation is not to reward or punish you for what you write. It's to act as a collective sieve so that not as many people have to read irrelevant posts.
The article was corrected. Therefore, there was no need for people to read posts bitching about the mistake in the article. I'm glad that some of the posts were marked down. I just wish they'd marked down the rest of them.
Instead, let's contribute a dollar to Linus for every user of Linux. ;)
NetBSD is (as far as I know) the ONLY one of the BSDs that ships with NO open services in the default install.
Y'know how OpenBSD used to brag about "X years without a remote root exploit in the default install"? These days, it's NetBSD that carries the "longest since remote root in default" banner, and they'll continue to have it (though they're a bit to understated to brag about it) until OpenBSD turns off incoming SSH and RPC.
Think that's a silly argument? Check your nearest OpenBSD box. Is it running RPC? Does it need to be? Isn't "turn off unnecessary services" one of the fundamentals of securing a box?
I can find no mention of it on Thomas, and if I bug my representative without a bill number, his staff's just going to check the "misc. loon" box when I call.
I doubt that current drives are too slow to allow the simultaneous reading and writing of an mpeg stream, especially with a decent buffer on the driver. Write a few megs, read a few megs, repeat. Given the type of data (large compressed streamed files), you can do really effective readahead.
I know that I can read and write mpeg2 streams to an NFS mounted disk over 100MB/s ethernet without problems. Over IDE hardly even seems like a challenge, and it's hardly the sort of thing that'd justify expensive proprietary hardware.
each of our rights to safety outweighs our rights to travel.
You do not have a "right" to safety. Such a thing would be impossible to ever offer. You do have a right to travel, on the other hand.
There was a stink about this on Prodigy back before this newfangled internet thing. The classical music fans were pissed because discussions about the song "Cum Sancto Spiritu" (roughly "with the holy spirit") were being banned.
I suspect a lack of Mac optimization from Blizzard.
Search on Google for "database acid test" for plenty of other references.
With that criteria, wouldn't cat, awk, and grep be all you'd need?
Unless you're worrying about the ACID properties that most people use as the minimum criteria for a database. Oh, wait. SQL doesn't have any of those.
Unfortunately, a flat file fills the "flat file" role even better.
Personally, I plan on buying it the day the linux client binaries are released. I want CompUSA (or wherever) to be wondering why the hell NWN sold an extra 10k copies that day.
Amen.
I used to have a job where management was incredibly clueless. We'd joke about trading our boss for the PHB from Dilbert because it'd be a step up. Eventually, this frustrated me enough that I left and found a job elsewhere.
At the new job, I had a new manager. He was a decent manager, and I accomplished a lot more than I had before. Clearly, I was vindicated: without the clueless manager, I was able to do more.
Then, due to a reorganization, I ended up working for a truly amazing manager. The guy really wanted to be sure that I was doing work that I found important and interesting. He's constantly asking around for ways that he can improve. I learned something pretty quickly: I wasn't the amazing employee that I thought I was. I was just better than some of my clueless coworkers. I learned that because this guy was constantly asking about my goals and what I wanted to get out of the project and the organization. I realized that I really did have a poor understanding of the organizations larger goals. Because of him, I really do feel like I've become more productive and I've gained insight into the big picture. Ironically, thanks to better management, I'm approaching the level of skill that I (incorrectly) thought that I had before.
This is like saying "There's nothing wrong with using Windows 2000 on a machine that came with 98 if it also came with a Microsoft keyboard and mouse." You can justify it however you like, but it's still theft if you don't have a license.
I have an Indigo 2 at home that was going to be thrown away. I have the hardware, the original OS CDs (5.3, I think), and a transfer of ownership statement from the original owner. SGI still wants $600 to bring the machine up to 6.5 legally.
I decided to use another OS (NetBSD) that could be installed legally instead of paying SGI or stealing their software.
Um, excuse me? Mister Moderator? I belive that's what they call a joke, son.
SuSE isn't bad, but I've found the following problems so far:
SuSE 8.0 is missing the gtk-config script. For that matter, I'm pretty sure (can't check now) that there's no gtk-devel. Yes, the gtk lib is there, but if you have any apps that you need to build, it's a little bit annoying.
The online updater is screwy. When I first tried, I got the "bad GPG sig" message talked about in the article. When I tried again, it wouldn't even try to download the updates. A detailed problem report (submitted via YaST2, nice) has not been answered in close to a week.
It looks like KDE 3 assumes that root can write to a user's home directory. I use NFS at home (and map root to nobody). KDE 3 doesn't like that at all. We use AFS at work. KDE 3 doesn't like that any better. Not SuSE's fault (same problems with RH 7.3 and with KDE 3 compiled myself).
On my laptop, YaST2 won't recognize my Xircom modem/ethernet card or my Lucent 802.11b card. The modules aren't even listed in their setup program. Tricky business, I know, but Red Hat handles it.
Wait until next year when they want $75/person to maintain the licenses that you have now.
It happened to the university where I work. They played hardball until they found out that we were serious about converting all of the PC labs to Linux/Star Office the moment the licenses expired. We had a "one disk" solution for students, too.