You are right: it's only a minimum/standard kind of web services compared to the specialized web service companies. On the other hand, 1&1 (or rather United Internet, the mother corp.) for example is the leading hoster in Germany. One could probably bring down 2/3 of the German internet sites by blowing up their data center in Karlsruhe...
I also don't like to fix my email address to my ISP. But I don't need to: my ISP (and most others here) include a free domain into the package, you can take that one with you when you switch.
Google as an ISP could probably never provide broadband for free based on ads. However, I was not refering to mandatory ads and I did not think about it in terms of AOL. I was talking about selling broadband at a very competitive price (maybe throwing in other goodies like to-be-invented pemium services on google.com) and financing that lower profit margin by data-mining on where people surf to, about as much as GMail scans your email for the same purpose.
Maybe it will not be cable-bound broadband, but WiFi instead, AFAIK Google has already made steps into that direction.
AFAIK a lot of the other ISPs also offer web services (at least webmail, often more).
It may be true only for Germany, but the large ISPs (T-Online, 1&1, GMX, freenet) all do this. GMX started out as a (web)mail service but now sells dial-up and DSL as well.
Of course, they provide neither search nor AIM functionality and one can argue about the quality of these services, but they do want to extend their lock-in of customers into other areas as well.
So, providing connection might be a wortwhile thing for Google. The profit margins themselves are not that compelling, but the synergy for other services could be great. Only one wacky idea: what if Google did the same to connection that it did to emails? Provide a dirt cheap service (I don't belive they can provide connection for free), but have the customer agree that they will analyze all the generated traffic to influence search engine ratings and use it for selecting ads. Once go to an X site and Google will always bring another X link in the ads box (e.g., X=porn).
Yes and no. Actually, they reuse the current frequencies which are usually full of conventional channels. Secondly, the stations want to save on transmission cost. Transmission cost (apart from a greater choice of programs) is the driving force behind the whole move to DVB-T.
Windows on the other hand defaults to administrator and any one of those additional administrator accounts are just as capable of destroying those critical system files. You have to go out of your way to be a neutered non administrator user and to NOT be an administrator capable of destroying the system simply because you forgot to change the radio button from 'administrator' to 'non-privileged' user
Even worse, one usually cannot run quite a number of programs if he is not Administrator. So even a guy like me that knows how it should be like is forced to add Administrator privileges to his account to run ordinary apps like CorelDraw.
It was reported recently that MS wants application vendors to write their applications correctly, so even non-Administrator users can run them, but the intended additional certification
will be for Longhorn, and thus in the future,
seems to be unpopular with application vendors
and is only an additional certification that nobody is forced to support.
So, all in all, local security on Windows will reamin a problem in the foreseeable future though Windows in theory brings all the requirements for more secure use.
If you want third party packages that anyone can make, you need another way. Autopackage is making excellent inroads into making that other way a reality. Really, check it out.
I did and indeed it looks very promising. It's great that it tries to tackle all these problems at once: package format, installation, library dependencies, install location. I will keep an eye on it and hope for a 1.0 release very soon!
I also disagree with everything being harder under Linux. Setting up my home DSL connection was a snap, and as far as applications even when my wife boots my machine into Windows she's running the same OpenOffice, Mozilla Thunderbird, and Opera that I'm running on my Linux drive. The only reason there's Windows at all is because she needs Adobe Illustrator / Photoshop etc. and refuses to learn the GIMP.
That's not really the thing that is more difficult.
Have you ever tried to distribute a program in binary from for Linux? You are directly in distribution hell, because every distribution (and different versions as well) contain incompatible library versions. Static linking used to be a resolution, but since glibc 2.3.3 it does not work anymore (even worse, it prints out warning, then works on your computer, but crashes on a computer with a different glibc version).
Everything is fine with source packages, either you download/compile/install it yourself or your distributor has already done that and provides you a package of some sort (or an ebuild, or a port, or whatever...), but for people who want to distribute binary packages, a common base like UnitedLinux would have been great. If LSB can do that, also fine! That would never mean the end of specialized distributions not targeted at normal desktop usage, nor would it mean to have the one distribution only.
Now I already can see lots of answers to this post telling me to simply distribute source, open source and nothing else. Sorry, as much as I would love to do that, that's not an option for the stuff I write at work for two reasons:
giving away our source would mean giving away our knowledge as well and that be the end of the business in our current situation.
we are targeting at an audience not too comfortable with compiling programs before using them.
A GUI installer would be nice, but a common package format (maybe compatible with RPM, DEB and other on the backend level) that works on every Linux would IMHO be more important. Maybe one where you have the chance to install the program in your home directory if the system dirs cannot be accessed.
It's the "enlightened" that makes the difference. It stems from the insight that if the public benefits from a specific behavior, you benefit yourself from adopting this behavior in the long run.
"Handle so, dass die Maxime deines Willens jederzeit zugleich als Prinzip einer allgemeinen Gesetzgebung gelten könne." Immanuel Kant,
1788.
[English translation]
One might add, that the name is correctly spelled with O-umlaut (that's Ö or \"o or latin-1-code 246). Slashdot not only garbles entities in comments but also converts perfectly valid characters to some inadequate (!) other characters.
IMHO the question about the beginning of life is one that cannot be answered by science. Life is no scientifically defined term. It is always a matter of interpretation, based on our background. E.g., for jews, life begins, when the first part of the baby is visible at birth. That's why they have so lax (from our POV) laws regarding stem cell research.
For what it's worth, when I visited some relatives in Germany about 8 years ago (?), my uncle mentioned a couple of laws that I found absolutely astounding. First, it was illegal to leave your car (and house? Can't remember) unlocked for any period of time. If you are making multiple trips, you are required to lock the car between each trip. That's just the law (don't know if it was local or what).
It guess someone mixed up laws and insurance requirements. AFAIK there is now law requiring you to lock your car (or house) - but don't try to get money from the insurance if they can prove you didn't lock it. But that should be the same elsewhere, I think?
BTW: Here is one of the more bothersome insurance requirements: If you get a bike insurance you must not leave your bike in front your own house but are obliged to lock it into to the cellar.
As a consequence,
of course, no insuranced bikes are "ever" stolen in front of anyone's house but always in front of pubs/friends houses/whatever...
Well, maybe not to the celtic tiger, but to Germany: In the last 30 years hundred thousands of people from (at least then) poorer countries and regions came to Germany. The first were italians, greeks and portugese, but later turkish people dominated.
So far, major retailers (ALDI, PLUS, Handelshof, to name only some) have cut their prices to (to use a typical example of DM 1,99) €0,99. Other retailers live with "ugly" prices at the moment, but will probably not be able to raise them because of the reatilers that lower.
Of course, this does not account for the next months or for more expensive goods, but when people get used to the new numbers, everything will be like before.For expensive things it simply pays to use a calculator.
You did not mention which language you use. I tried to use autoconf/automake to build a project using C++ that
has to work on Linux, Solaris, IRIX and NT
uses modern C++ features (namespaces, exceptions, STL, maybe even member templates)
uses native compilers for speed optimization
(NT: Borland, VC++ and cygwin are not sufficient) besides GCC
cannot use cygwin.dll because that is GPLed
will maybe sometime in the future turn into open-source or even free software
I've been very satisfied with the unform way of configuring and compiling programs for Linux and Unices. It seemed viable even for big C++-Projects like KDE. "Even wxWindows uses it, and that's cross-platform for sure.", I thought.
Well, that was naive. I struggled for weeks building a build system that would work on Linux(GCC), IRIX(MipsPro), SUN(SunWS) and NT(Borland). Even the difference between GCC and the other Unix compilers became a hard problem. In the end I coded a macro that set CXXFLAGS and various other AC_SUBST variables according to the platform used. Still, the automatic dependency tracking only worked with GCC, so I started writing a script that simplified the generation of the configure script. Now I have to reconfigure each time I want to try, say, IRIX for compiling. Hmpf.
NT (with Borland) was a disaster in itself. First, I installed cygwin to have the necessary tools. The CLI of Borland differs greatly from the (more-or-less) Unix standard, so I ended up writing wrapper scripts that translated them. The final point came when I wanted to build a static library. Well, it works, with another wrapper script, but it ends up in *.a files, because I found no way to tell autoconf/automake that there might be different extensions for static libs. Maybe I'm to blame here, because I didn't dare to use libtool, but the complexity of the toolset already grew over my head.
Autoconf may have its advantages if your are using C and need to be compatible to some brain-dead machines from the seventies. For writing portable C++ programs, look for something else. Or stay with the makefiles. Good crafted makefiles still aren't that bad. You can even supply a dummy configure script, so no one downloading the thing has to change his habits...
First of all the term "Sekte" (religious splinetr group) has as much to do with the term "Sekt" (sparkling wine) as with "Insekt" (insect)...
More important is the fact that this warning was issued by the catholic church and not by state officials. They tend to exaggerate a little when it comes to CoS. I'm not a fan of CoS, but the big churches in germany tend to be quite hypocritical of "their competitors".
Though we have laws that fight antidemocratic groups by cutting on their rights, this is always done cautiously and the dangers that come from the goup have to be quite clear. Based on that I would not expect real consequences on the findings here. The danger of CoS infiltrating the world by means of a disk defragmentization program seem a little too far fetched.
We had the same problem here with an SOLARIS 2.5 box as NFS server and Linux 2.0.36 as client. After some access from the linux box (5 min. at best) any access from any machine to the same dir (NFS or not!) hung processes.
The Problem went away with Linux 2.2
IRIX 6.4 works fine here, but IRIX 6.3 as server and Linux (2.2.2 at the moment) as client locks up directories on the client machine. But this might be due to the use of autofs...
As I understand your problem, the partititions are correctly shown in Linux fdisk. So why worry? I'd think DiskDruid is not up to date, and you need to bypass it.
OTOH, I don't know how to do that, I don't use RH.
Slashdot Mirror
Oops, I overlooked that... you are right.
At least the story also appeared on the (usually very reliable) Heise Newsticker.
Whether it will fly in the EU is another thing...
that's history since XFree 4 (if your video card is not so old and obscure to still only being supported by Xfree 3).
You are right: it's only a minimum/standard kind of web services compared to the specialized web service companies. On the other hand, 1&1 (or rather United Internet, the mother corp.) for example is the leading hoster in Germany. One could probably bring down 2/3 of the German internet sites by blowing up their data center in Karlsruhe...
I also don't like to fix my email address to my ISP. But I don't need to: my ISP (and most others here) include a free domain into the package, you can take that one with you when you switch.
Google as an ISP could probably never provide broadband for free based on ads. However, I was not refering to mandatory ads and I did not think about it in terms of AOL. I was talking about selling broadband at a very competitive price (maybe throwing in other goodies like to-be-invented pemium services on google.com) and financing that lower profit margin by data-mining on where people surf to, about as much as GMail scans your email for the same purpose.
Maybe it will not be cable-bound broadband, but WiFi instead, AFAIK Google has already made steps into that direction.
AFAIK a lot of the other ISPs also offer web services (at least webmail, often more).
It may be true only for Germany, but the large ISPs (T-Online, 1&1, GMX, freenet) all do this. GMX started out as a (web)mail service but now sells dial-up and DSL as well.
Of course, they provide neither search nor AIM functionality and one can argue about the quality of these services, but they do want to extend their lock-in of customers into other areas as well.
So, providing connection might be a wortwhile thing for Google. The profit margins themselves are not that compelling, but the synergy for other services could be great. Only one wacky idea: what if Google did the same to connection that it did to emails? Provide a dirt cheap service (I don't belive they can provide connection for free), but have the customer agree that they will analyze all the generated traffic to influence search engine ratings and use it for selecting ads. Once go to an X site and Google will always bring another X link in the ads box (e.g., X=porn).
Yes and no. Actually, they reuse the current frequencies which are usually full of conventional channels. Secondly, the stations want to save on transmission cost. Transmission cost (apart from a greater choice of programs) is the driving force behind the whole move to DVB-T.
Windows on the other hand defaults to administrator and any one of those additional administrator accounts are just as capable of destroying those critical system files. You have to go out of your way to be a neutered non administrator user and to NOT be an administrator capable of destroying the system simply because you forgot to change the radio button from 'administrator' to 'non-privileged' user
Even worse, one usually cannot run quite a number of programs if he is not Administrator. So even a guy like me that knows how it should be like is forced to add Administrator privileges to his account to run ordinary apps like CorelDraw.
It was reported recently that MS wants application vendors to write their applications correctly, so even non-Administrator users can run them, but the intended additional certification
So, all in all, local security on Windows will reamin a problem in the foreseeable future though Windows in theory brings all the requirements for more secure use.
If you want third party packages that anyone can make, you need another way. Autopackage is making excellent inroads into making that other way a reality. Really, check it out.
I did and indeed it looks very promising. It's great that it tries to tackle all these problems at once: package format, installation, library dependencies, install location. I will keep an eye on it and hope for a 1.0 release very soon!
I also disagree with everything being harder under Linux. Setting up my home DSL connection was a snap, and as far as applications even when my wife boots my machine into Windows she's running the same OpenOffice, Mozilla Thunderbird, and Opera that I'm running on my Linux drive. The only reason there's Windows at all is because she needs Adobe Illustrator / Photoshop etc. and refuses to learn the GIMP.
That's not really the thing that is more difficult.
Have you ever tried to distribute a program in binary from for Linux? You are directly in distribution hell, because every distribution (and different versions as well) contain incompatible library versions. Static linking used to be a resolution, but since glibc 2.3.3 it does not work anymore (even worse, it prints out warning, then works on your computer, but crashes on a computer with a different glibc version).
Everything is fine with source packages, either you download/compile/install it yourself or your distributor has already done that and provides you a package of some sort (or an ebuild, or a port, or whatever...), but for people who want to distribute binary packages, a common base like UnitedLinux would have been great. If LSB can do that, also fine! That would never mean the end of specialized distributions not targeted at normal desktop usage, nor would it mean to have the one distribution only.
Now I already can see lots of answers to this post telling me to simply distribute source, open source and nothing else. Sorry, as much as I would love to do that, that's not an option for the stuff I write at work for two reasons:
- giving away our source would mean giving away our knowledge as well and that be the end of the business in our current situation.
- we are targeting at an audience not too comfortable with compiling programs before using them.
A GUI installer would be nice, but a common package format (maybe compatible with RPM, DEB and other on the backend level) that works on every Linux would IMHO be more important. Maybe one where you have the chance to install the program in your home directory if the system dirs cannot be accessed.It's the "enlightened" that makes the difference. It stems from the insight that if the public benefits from a specific behavior, you benefit yourself from adopting this behavior in the long run.
"Handle so, dass die Maxime deines Willens jederzeit zugleich als Prinzip einer allgemeinen Gesetzgebung gelten könne." Immanuel Kant, 1788. [English translation]
One might add, that the name is correctly spelled with O-umlaut (that's Ö or \"o or latin-1-code 246).
Slashdot not only garbles entities in comments but also converts perfectly valid characters to some inadequate (!) other characters.
IMHO the question about the beginning of life is one that cannot be answered by science. Life is no scientifically defined term. It is always a matter of interpretation, based on our background.
E.g., for jews, life begins, when the first part of the baby is visible at birth. That's why they have so lax (from our POV) laws regarding stem cell research.
It guess someone mixed up laws and insurance requirements. AFAIK there is now law requiring you to lock your car (or house) - but don't try to get money from the insurance if they can prove you didn't lock it. But that should be the same elsewhere, I think?
BTW: Here is one of the more bothersome insurance requirements: If you get a bike insurance you must not leave your bike in front your own house but are obliged to lock it into to the cellar. As a consequence, of course, no insuranced bikes are "ever" stolen in front of anyone's house but always in front of pubs/friends houses/whatever...
Well, maybe not to the celtic tiger, but to Germany: In the last 30 years hundred thousands of people from (at least then) poorer countries and regions came to Germany. The first were italians, greeks and portugese, but later turkish people dominated.
Of course, this does not account for the next months or for more expensive goods, but when people get used to the new numbers, everything will be like before.For expensive things it simply pays to use a calculator.
You did not mention which language you use. I tried to use autoconf/automake to build a project using C++ that
I've been very satisfied with the unform way of configuring and compiling programs for Linux and Unices. It seemed viable even for big C++-Projects like KDE. "Even wxWindows uses it, and that's cross-platform for sure.", I thought.
Well, that was naive. I struggled for weeks building a build system that would work on Linux(GCC), IRIX(MipsPro), SUN(SunWS) and NT(Borland). Even the difference between GCC and the other Unix compilers became a hard problem. In the end I coded a macro that set CXXFLAGS and various other AC_SUBST variables according to the platform used. Still, the automatic dependency tracking only worked with GCC, so I started writing a script that simplified the generation of the configure script. Now I have to reconfigure each time I want to try, say, IRIX for compiling. Hmpf.
NT (with Borland) was a disaster in itself. First, I installed cygwin to have the necessary tools. The CLI of Borland differs greatly from the (more-or-less) Unix standard, so I ended up writing wrapper scripts that translated them. The final point came when I wanted to build a static library. Well, it works, with another wrapper script, but it ends up in *.a files, because I found no way to tell autoconf/automake that there might be different extensions for static libs. Maybe I'm to blame here, because I didn't dare to use libtool, but the complexity of the toolset already grew over my head.
Autoconf may have its advantages if your are using C and need to be compatible to some brain-dead machines from the seventies. For writing portable C++ programs, look for something else. Or stay with the makefiles. Good crafted makefiles still aren't that bad. You can even supply a dummy configure script, so no one downloading the thing has to change his habits ...
First of all the term "Sekte" (religious splinetr group) has as much to do with the term "Sekt" (sparkling wine) as with "Insekt" (insect)...
More important is the fact that this warning was issued by the catholic church and not by state officials. They tend to exaggerate a little when it comes to CoS. I'm not a fan of CoS, but the big churches in germany tend to be quite hypocritical of "their competitors".
Though we have laws that fight antidemocratic groups by cutting on their rights, this is always done cautiously and the dangers that come from the goup have to be quite clear. Based on that I would not expect real consequences on the findings here. The danger of CoS infiltrating the world by means of a disk defragmentization program seem a little too far fetched.
If MS wasn't concerned, nobody had cared at all.
I heard Al Gore saying he is the saint of the internet. :-)
We had the same problem here with an SOLARIS 2.5 box as NFS server and Linux 2.0.36 as client. After some access from the linux box (5 min. at best) any access from any machine to the same dir (NFS or not!) hung processes.
The Problem went away with Linux 2.2
IRIX 6.4 works fine here, but IRIX 6.3 as server and Linux (2.2.2 at the moment) as client locks up directories on the client machine. But this might be due to the use of autofs...
As I understand your problem, the partititions are correctly shown in Linux fdisk. So why worry? I'd think DiskDruid is not up to date, and you need to bypass it.
OTOH, I don't know how to do that, I don't use RH.