94304-5533 is a zip code in Palo Alto, California.
Coincidence? Or something far more sinister?
There are (latent) coincidences all around us, just waiting to be observed. There's a quotation (or maybe it's something I made up -- someone please tell me if they know where it's from, 'cause not knowing bugs me!) in my head, something like "There is nothing so unlikely as all the things that actually are."
If you shop at a store with numbered carts, you may have noticed that you associate certain numbers (on carts) with referants in the Outside World. I don't know the exact ratio, but I've attempted to guess how many of the numbers from 1 to 1000 (reasonable grocery cart numbers) have taken a meaning beyond just the digits.
A random sampling:
1 - ironically, thousands of meanings. 1 is the loneliest number, 1 in a million, etc.
lowest triangle number
007 - the most dangerous cart, as well as "7" the holy number, days in the week, etc.
12 months, apostles, fingers + feet, days of xmas
13 - everyone's favorite
28 Days in an idealized (lunar / menstrual) cycle
32 - freezing point
42
52 - cards in a deck, weeks in a year
57 (Heinz 57 sauce, 57 Chevy)
98 - body temperature
101 - canonical beginners class, skateboard company
180 - the difference in degrees between what most politicians say and what they mean How much RAM (in TB) most of us would like;)
360- Degrees in a circle
365 - days in a year
366 days in a leap year
408- engine
512 - any multiple of 2 is binarily significant...
666 - mmmm, steal stuff from his cart, right?
747 - plane
757 - plane
767 - plane
777 - chmod permissions
923 - looks like ESP in mirror
999 - from Saturday Night Live Sketch about The Omen "No, there're no sixes! ust a couple of nines!"
Granted, some of these are categories rather than unique referants, but still...
Anyhow. I think Jamie's point is the arbitrary nature of assigning significance to "coincidences" when the systems which generated the coincidence is itself contrived. At least, that's my point.;) Cool mneumonics, though.
.much of the early impact survival work was carried out on animals. "We saw chimpanzees riding rocket sleds, a bear on an impact swing...
Can you imagine the reports collected from this? Maybe something along the lines of...
"After applying the collision test with various different animals, the following speeds much be achieved to severely maim or kill the following animals:
Chimpanzee: 34 mph Pig: 41 mph Dog: 38 mph Horse: Could not fit in viechle
For an illuminating view of animal testing (and it's worth / applicabilty to humans), I would recommend a book by (please don't laugh until you've skimmed it) G. Gordon Liddy, called The Monkey Handlers.
It's a fun read if you like macho action-thrillers (2-bit summary: ex-SEAL prevents terrorists from using nerve gas on NYC, after discovering the nerve gas' development at a plant in New York which was doing some *interesting* animal tests) and can accept fiction for what it is, but I won't get into the literary merits of it. Whole other story.
The part that's relevant to this professor is that there is simply no really good way to extrapolate results from (much) animal testing to human beans. There are anatomical, chemical and pyschological differences between / among species both obvious and subtle.
I am unwilling to engage in a flame-war on this topic, so please don't flame me on this. I'm *not* necessarily against animal testing, only mentioning in passing that a) there are shortcomings to it which can render it less than useful and b) that people make a lot of money from doing studies with results like the (humorous, but frightening) hypothetical results above.
And this is off-tpoic enough for several weeks...
timothy
I'm not the target audience, but ...
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Using Samba
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· Score: 2
I'm glad to see reviews of a draft copy of anything here on slashdot!
Ahead of the curve... (and nicely behind the curve with the reviews of older SciFi etc, too).
Perhaps Rob should issue separate pools of "up" and "down" points. If the losers go beserk, he can increase the quota of "down" points in proportion. Meanwhile, you always have a base supply of "up" points for more positive uses.
I've sugggested this before; I think it would be great! There really are more productive uses for moderator points as currently distributed, though -- but it would be great to have some counterbalance to malicious jerks... there's no true antidote to someone who wants to mess up your day, but little things help.
If you should chance to read the several identical postings here, they're all the same taunt. At least he's honest - he wants to make people waste their moderator points.
Moderating down an anonymous coward is probably a worse way to use your points than using them to bump up the things you think deserve to be seen.
Besides, Natalie Portman probably doesn't have *both* of the things this guy attributes to her in his own ee cummings semi-referential kind of way...
a) The location for Walt's refrigerator I usually hear as under Space Mountain, rather than the Pirates of the Carib. I like to think of it that way, too, every time I ride the Mountain.
b) Yeah, I read the Straight Dope piece about that too, but c'mon! If the man was in a freezer somewhere, it'd still be easy enough to come up with some ashes to avoid the "where's he buried?" scrutiny. There are plenty of empty or mislabeled graves on the planet. So C. Adams coming up with a location for some ashes wouldn't put a dent in any *serious* cryogenic theories. Only tearing up the whole park and failing to find the freezer. Even then...;)
The other exciting thing about Linux is the mainstream applications that are emerging. I know people don't buy an SGI box to run spreadsheets, but it's nice to know that you don't have to keep a Windows PC around just for the odd time you want to run an office productivity application. Linux lets SGI ride the wave of new mainstream developments while still catering to their niche market.
I think this is an important point.
When NT started to (self-declaredly) encroach on what had been UNIX workstation territory 3 or 4 years ago, one of the arguments that MS made on its behalf was that people wouldn't need to have a separate box on their desk for common office (read "MS Office") tasks.
This aspect is one of the things that was hyped in The Analysts' reports (Brown? IDC?) finding lower TCO for NT than for UNIX machines. Now that there are some Web-based application suites semi-available (and more poised to be really available RSN;)), the idea that anyone would really need a separate box for tapping out a memo is getting sillier anyhow.
StarOffice, for Free? Heh! Running on a multi-processor SGI sytem? That sounds just about right...
timothy
p.s.(And one day there will be a funny graph of IDC opinions, with an inflection point around this year...)
My dad retired (several years ago) after 20-some years at NSA.
I don't know much about what he did, but I do know that part of his job involved installing and training people with computer systems, and he made trips to quite a number of countries in order (I believe) to do that, Turkey for one.
My casual understanding from glancing through books like The Puzzle Palace and from talking to other folks I know (pops won't tell me) is that NSA also helps other agencies with thier computers, too. So the story about the SEL 32 rings fairly true, or certainly plausible.
There are some news sources which claim to be 'objective' but which have evident long-term biases in their coverage. You can probably think of a few on both sides of the usual "left-wing" / "right-wing" spectrum -- And that's just as Americans use the terms.
Is the New York Times unbiased? Is the Washington Post? In this context, is PC World? Is Network Computing?
There are other sources which make no bones about their editorial preferences, but which nonetheless make good news sources, because having a bias is not the same as being willing to lie or stomach distortions. In fact, it makes it easier for a reader to realize what parts of a story may have been emphasized or de-emphasized.
In the context of slashdot, an article which exhibits none of the usual FUD can be seen as pleasantly "biased" toward Linux. Think of the bias of a tape -- a known reference point based around which other information is encoded. (That's poor phrasing, but is the analogy fair?)
Here is my idea for a GOOD opt-in marketing model.
1. Everyone has an online virtual account which allows any other person to deposit funds into it. 2. The spammer deposits pennies or more into your account when they send you the message. 3. A spamer's chance of having you read this message increases with the ammount of money they put into your account. 4. It would be illegal to send spams without putting a minimum ammount per message length. Lets say 5cents per 10k
This is a great idea! I see two big complications to it as presented above, though:
1) What assurace would the spam producers have that the mail they sent is read? Would there be multiple-choice questions at the bottom which a reader would have to answer as "proof"?
2) Though at some point it's all beans, the idea of populating several millions of accounts with a few pennies seems to my (uninformed) mind pretty daunting. And there would have to be pretty good security checks as well...
What I'd like to see is a system like the one cruise proposes, but with a catch: the amount to be desposited in order to make something worth reading ought to be determined not by decree (a min. per K or whatever) but by the recipient. If your time is worth $100 or more an hour, spam had better be worth a few bucks in order to spend even 30 seconds scanning it. If you make $6.25 / hr at the local retail store after school, you might be willing to scan spam all day at a slight improvement to that figure.
So when you sign up for the Spamolicious Account, you could specify areas of interest and how much money you'd need to be bothered with it.
Real Soon Now...
timothy
p.s. One thing to note is that many people *have* granted permission to at least one breed of spammer, which is the one using purchased lists compiled from all the places which have asked you for an email address in order to (for instance) "send you important updates" and say in the fine print that the info may be provided to other "fine" merchants...
It's obvious I know, but one of, if not the chief reason that many people can't use Linux (actually, can't use anything besides Windows X or Macintosh) at work is the dysfunctional relationship that companies have with Microsoft, which goes somehthing like this:
SCENE ONE: The recent past
Company: "I want a word processor."
MS: "Here's MS Word."
Company: "Great! It's got an OK interface and lots of features! We'll standardize on it, and figure the cost of buying it is money well-spent."
MS: "Nice doing business with you. See you in a few months!"
Company: "What?"
MS: "Oops -- look at the time. Gotta go."
SCENE TWO: The even more recent past.
Company: "Errr... some of our suppliers now have a newer version of Word and send us files in it all the time. Can we read them with our old version of Word?"
MS: "ha, ha. No. But you can buy this economical upgrade and then be using the same version they are. ha ha."
Company: "That doesn't seem very nice, but... OK."
MS: "Nice doing business with you. See you in a few months."
Company: "Hey, do you mean this keeps happening?!"
MS: "Whoops -- look at the time. Gotta go. You have a nice day, hear?"
Companies which deal in information exchanged electronically have it in their interest to insist on non-proprietary formats unless they absolutely need them, for functional reasons. (Lotus notes, say. -- but not WP docs.)
So what are good formats?
Text, for things that don't need pretty formatting
HTML, for things that need to be accessed in a variety of formats
XML - for more complicated things what need to be acessed in a variety of formats
PostScript - for manuals etc for which you need exact typographic control.
And yes, this message contains forward looking statements. It's true that not every place of business is flexible or imaginative enough to use a different color of paint, never mind an operating system other than the one in place now. But long term, I think the linux infection will keep casting shadows on hothouse-flower file formats.
As others have pointed out, now is not the same as Soon. True -- but would you rather get on the boat leaving now or the jet leaving soon?* Best case scenario I would think for companies which are unable / unwilling right now to switch to a Free / free OS would be to at least study the possibility, because sooner or later you'll have to consider it. To mix a few metaphors: Inertia is a powerful force in business, but tides do turn eventually, and this is a full moon.
Cheers,
timothy
*Too many variables left undefined, I know, but you get the point;)
They're not perfect, I but I meant them to be lighthearted and easy to follow.
Even still, there is an undeniable catch-22 in that someone who wanted to use these directions or any other online documentation won't have it to use from home. This is getting to be less and less of a problem as Internet access gets more and more ubiquitous - hopefully soon we'll all have DSL and kppp will be only a memory...:) But hopefully someone could print this out at a friend's house or the library, or print it using the OS that came with their Compaq Presario before reformatting and installing something better.
This is important. There seem to be quite a few linux-on-a-floppy distributions. I have not used any of them, but I would imagine that at least a few are similar in intent to the QNX demo where there is a small QNX system, dialer, broswer all on one floppy.
So would it count to slip one in the floppy drive, toggle the power switch, and say "done!"? That might sound finegally / like cheating (since the contestant wouldn't have "really" installed Linux on the computer as in put it on the hard drive), but it would create a system that was re-bootable into the GNU/Linux system as often as desired, since it's on the floppy. Just like more traditional Linux system which rely on a boot floppy.
(I'm sure someone will correct my if I'm relying on false assumptions...)
So, further, What will the exact rules be?
Will each competitor have to cWill the competitor have to connect to an ethernet network? Demonstrate the compilation of a kernel? start a game of nethack?
I ask not as a potential competitor, but because I find the design of contests / competitions an interesting topic to me as a professional picker of nits.
I certainly hope the results will become a feature here on/.! (Not just the results, of course, but the dynamics of the contest; who wins *offically,* who wins trickily, what clever hacks were used to create a fast install, which mainstream distribution goes on quickest in a reasonable / normal total install, which distribution's installer...
This is an important issue (ease-of-install) for any operating system, and one in which Linux still has percieved weaknesses. (I disagree with this perception, I'm just saying it's there.)
There is a presumption in the post to which he responded that in fact CD-Rs have made a significant dent in software profits. I see two reasons that make me doubt they have, with the possible exception of MS operating systems.
1) Software makers make the big money by selling software to businesses, including universities. Businesses (esp. ones that are over 4 or 5 people big) can't afford piracy, long term. Does it go on? Sure, but CD-R only makes this process easier, it isn't the start of it. Businesses like support, and docs...
2)People like documentation and accountability. That the accountability may be illusory for most users, the documentation is not. And it's considerably more inconvenient to make high-quality copies of documentation to accompany software. Folks will no doubt continue to exchange software, but the software industry will continue to sell boxed software for the advantages it offers. Note how well even boxed Linux distib.s sell! That's software which is free -- so someone could download it without even the risk / discomfort of illegality.
(response, getting slightly OT and onto USB)
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SuSE Coming on DVD
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· Score: 3
Pascal Q Porcupine wrote:
Uhh, what's wrong with the 'hardware' category? It's not like there's going to be a constant flux of non-movie DVD articles or USB articles period... (And it's a category, not an icon. Categories just happen to have icons.)
Well, you're right: DVD and USB are different things.
Re: DVD -- there might not be that many non-movie DVD articles here, but in truth it's the movie-related ones I'm interested in mostly. I think it's cool that SuSE will have a DVD distro, though! (Didn't FreeBSD have a DVD distro starting months ago? Or was that strictly a hypothetical?) I like it partly because it will encourage more people to buy DVD drives for their massive storage -- and hopefully then want more from the hardware they've already paid for. The more Free / free OS users with DVD drives, the better as far as I'm concerned. There have been a string of hope-inspiring bits about DVD lately, as the software and hardware under Linux (and hopefully soon for the BSDs) come together. And as that happens (there are several projects working on Linux video already...) I think it'd be great to have a distinct DVD category to announce major developments, new player front-ends, etc, with an icon, so I can spot it at the top of the Slashdot page -- categories are abstract, icons are nicely visual. (Is my usage correct now?!);)
And as for USB, I disagree that there are no articles dealing with it -- it's been a pretty good topic of conversation, especially when it comes to discussing what will be in upcoming kernels. And there ought to be more! USB devices are handy and no longer a curiosity in either the Mac or Windows worlds... the more Linux supports USB, the better it will be. Case in point is the Microtech USB SmartMedia / FlashCard / MicroDrive reader I got a few weeks ago: it costs less than a hundred dollars, but provides connection to three types of small, dense storage. I wish it would work under Linux, so I could use it at home as well as at work.
Thumbing through a magazine ("Digital Camera"? Something like that) at a local bookstore a few hours ago, I also noticed a screen-color calibration device -- with a USB connection. There are all sorts of devices which use USB -- input devices (including bar code readers), storage devices, printes, scanners, blah blah blah... so far Linux is unfortunately (and I think temporarily) behind the curve in supporting them. I'd be curious to hear from developers why this is; are there inherent coding difficulties with USB? If there are, can they be expressed in layman's terms? From what I understand, the only support so far is for keyboards and mice -- about the only things that I don't care about being USB.:(
And about the people in the library... well, to most people using a computer (and as GUI designers strive for, at least in part), an icon effectively *is* the program it represents; the GUI takes away the complexity which would have made a computer otherwise forbidding to (some / many) users. Maybe in a couple years, the people you call posers now won't be. Right?
The next wave of Linux users WILL be cheap people who buy cheap gear. "Linux? Free software?!? Kewl doods!!!! Hey Microsoft I want my sixty bucks back!!!!!"
This is not necessarily bad. In fact, I think it would be interesting if Microsoft were forced to explicitly position itself as the "luxury" OS, compared to the "cheapies." But the cheapies are likely to soon include not just the various full-featured UNIX-based Free / free OSes, but also the rumored-but-vaporous "non-MS machines" which so many vendors are talking about to run their cheaper-than-the-same-weight-of-dirt Internet Terminals, WWW Appliances and whatnot.
Interesting because a) it might make MS OSes better than they are (I'm no fan, but they do some things fair, middlin' or well -- and it'd be nice to see that aspect continue) and b) I don't think they could actually hold the "luxury" ground very well, which would make for Interesting Times (my favorite chinese curse...). Note: for refrence, the things I'm thinking of defining "luxury" in this case are the same ones that MS has been trying to own for a while: ease of installation (Mandrake wins for me, YMMV), easy upgrades (ja RPM!), utter hardware support (MS wins, so far, but the lead is narrowing), and reliability (I'll let you draw your own conclusions).
But hey -- if Linux can be made to work with lowest-common denominator machines, Great! I think the owners are going to wish for upgrades in the form of faster machines, not "That grand vision of an OS that Microsoft has but that we couldn't afford a few years ago when we bought this piece of junk PC that came with Linux..."
Playing games seems a sensible thing to do with a platform that supports it. My experience based on both high school and college (done with both a little while ago;) )is that the people who play games are often the same ones who are curious and willing to test out the capabilities of their calculators / palm pilots etc.(In my school's case, it was the TI-81, and then the rad HPs, not to mention the Macs in the back of the journalism room.)
They (the kids who play with their stuff) are expressing natural curiosity, and often probably shouldn't be being forced to sit through school at all.
(Note: I was not a calulator player, and as a result am now failing to collect on a large CS-based salary. My mistake.)
Can't speak for today's NEC CRT monitors (but they used to make some great ones... ), but I like their current flat panels.
Nanao also is making some nice-looking flat-panels, haven't noticed CRTs with that brand in a while...
Branding in the computer business unfortunately does not represent uniformity of quality, at least not as much as I'd like. Compaq used to be a good name... now, though they make some cool high-end stuff, the low-end machines are buggy and cheap-seeming (and ugly). NEC, same deal. Companies cash in respected names, ruining them in the process.
Dell (disclaimer: I work for them, indirectly) is one of the fewmainstream computer makers I would actually think of as having consistently high quality for home machines... Micron is another. But even Dell can't cut corners everywhere and expect the rep to hold. Good reputations have a much shorter shelf life than bad ones.
timothy
Ah... one day I'll be able to afford a flat panel, too.
This story reminds me a little bit about the French senators who want computer programming done for France to be open sourced -- it demonstrates the value that can be salvaged from tax money that's already been spent.
Is there a good reason that it could not simply be a standard clause in the contracts surrounding comptuer programming done for any government agency that the result must be reusable, barring previous conflicting licensing terms? There are all sorts of other standards imposed on nearly every government contract, and this is one that might actually add some value.
Remember, the only way the government buys something is with money it's already taken from you for your benefit, or with money it promises it will take from you later. (Also for your benefit.)
I can offend both the feminazis and the stereotypical slashdotter (leftish, anti-capitalist, etc) in one foul swoop
Well, the guy's got a point! His powers of offense are awesome.
Usually the phrase is rendered "one fell swoop," but in this case, "one foul swoop" seems more accurate anyhow. And the benefit of the doubt says it is the only clever turn of phrase in the post!
Slashdot Mirror
There are (latent) coincidences all around us, just waiting to be observed. There's a quotation (or maybe it's something I made up -- someone please tell me if they know where it's from, 'cause not knowing bugs me!) in my head, something like "There is nothing so unlikely as all the things that actually are."
If you shop at a store with numbered carts, you may have noticed that you associate certain numbers (on carts) with referants in the Outside World. I don't know the exact ratio, but I've attempted to guess how many of the numbers from 1 to 1000 (reasonable grocery cart numbers) have taken a meaning beyond just the digits.
A random sampling:
How much RAM (in TB) most of us would like
Granted, some of these are categories rather than unique referants, but still
Anyhow. I think Jamie's point is the arbitrary nature of assigning significance to "coincidences" when the systems which generated the coincidence is itself contrived. At least, that's my point.
timothy
For an illuminating view of animal testing (and it's worth / applicabilty to humans), I would recommend a book by (please don't laugh until you've skimmed it) G. Gordon Liddy, called The Monkey Handlers.
It's a fun read if you like macho action-thrillers (2-bit summary: ex-SEAL prevents terrorists from using nerve gas on NYC, after discovering the nerve gas' development at a plant in New York which was doing some *interesting* animal tests) and can accept fiction for what it is, but I won't get into the literary merits of it. Whole other story.
The part that's relevant to this professor is that there is simply no really good way to extrapolate results from (much) animal testing to human beans. There are anatomical, chemical and pyschological differences between / among species both obvious and subtle.
I am unwilling to engage in a flame-war on this topic, so please don't flame me on this. I'm *not* necessarily against animal testing, only mentioning in passing that a) there are shortcomings to it which can render it less than useful and b) that people make a lot of money from doing studies with results like the (humorous, but frightening) hypothetical results above.
And this is off-tpoic enough for several weeks
timothy
I'm glad to see reviews of a draft copy of anything here on slashdot!
... (and nicely behind the curve with the reviews of older SciFi etc, too).
Ahead of the curve
Cool!
timothy
I've sugggested this before; I think it would be great! There really are more productive uses for moderator points as currently distributed, though -- but it would be great to have some counterbalance to malicious jerks
timothy
If you should chance to read the several identical postings here, they're all the same taunt. At least he's honest - he wants to make people waste their moderator points.
...
Moderating down an anonymous coward is probably a worse way to use your points than using them to bump up the things you think deserve to be seen.
Besides, Natalie Portman probably doesn't have *both* of the things this guy attributes to her in his own ee cummings semi-referential kind of way
timothy
a) The location for Walt's refrigerator I usually hear as under Space Mountain, rather than the Pirates of the Carib. I like to think of it that way, too, every time I ride the Mountain.
...;)
b) Yeah, I read the Straight Dope piece about that too, but c'mon! If the man was in a freezer somewhere, it'd still be easy enough to come up with some ashes to avoid the "where's he buried?" scrutiny. There are plenty of empty or mislabeled graves on the planet. So C. Adams coming up with a location for some ashes wouldn't put a dent in any *serious* cryogenic theories. Only tearing up the whole park and failing to find the freezer. Even then
timothy
I think this is an important point.
When NT started to (self-declaredly) encroach on what had been UNIX workstation territory 3 or 4 years ago, one of the arguments that MS made on its behalf was that people wouldn't need to have a separate box on their desk for common office (read "MS Office") tasks.
This aspect is one of the things that was hyped in The Analysts' reports (Brown? IDC?) finding lower TCO for NT than for UNIX machines. Now that there are some Web-based application suites semi-available (and more poised to be really available RSN
StarOffice, for Free? Heh! Running on a multi-processor SGI sytem? That sounds just about right
timothy
p.s.(And one day there will be a funny graph of IDC opinions, with an inflection point around this year
My dad retired (several years ago) after 20-some years at NSA.
I don't know much about what he did, but I do know that part of his job involved installing and training people with computer systems, and he made trips to quite a number of countries in order (I believe) to do that, Turkey for one.
My casual understanding from glancing through books like The Puzzle Palace and from talking to other folks I know (pops won't tell me) is that NSA also helps other agencies with thier computers, too. So the story about the SEL 32 rings fairly true, or certainly plausible.
timothy
Journalistic objectivity is a complex thing.
...
There are some news sources which claim to be 'objective' but which have evident long-term biases in their coverage. You can probably think of a few on both sides of the usual "left-wing" / "right-wing" spectrum -- And that's just as Americans use the terms.
Is the New York Times unbiased? Is the Washington Post? In this context, is PC World? Is Network Computing?
There are other sources which make no bones about their editorial preferences, but which nonetheless make good news sources, because having a bias is not the same as being willing to lie or stomach distortions. In fact, it makes it easier for a reader to realize what parts of a story may have been emphasized or de-emphasized.
In the context of slashdot, an article which exhibits none of the usual FUD can be seen as pleasantly "biased" toward Linux. Think of the bias of a tape -- a known reference point based around which other information is encoded. (That's poor phrasing, but is the analogy fair?)
just thoughts
timothy
as insightful, interesting, all that.
It's well-written and provacative, and offers interesting links rather than only "I assert X."
Thanks for posting it, Zach.
timothy
This is a great idea! I see two big complications to it as presented above, though:
1) What assurace would the spam producers have that the mail they sent is read? Would there be multiple-choice questions at the bottom which a reader would have to answer as "proof"?
2) Though at some point it's all beans, the idea of populating several millions of accounts with a few pennies seems to my (uninformed) mind pretty daunting. And there would have to be pretty good security checks as well
What I'd like to see is a system like the one cruise proposes, but with a catch: the amount to be desposited in order to make something worth reading ought to be determined not by decree (a min. per K or whatever) but by the recipient. If your time is worth $100 or more an hour, spam had better be worth a few bucks in order to spend even 30 seconds scanning it. If you make $6.25 / hr at the local retail store after school, you might be willing to scan spam all day at a slight improvement to that figure.
So when you sign up for the Spamolicious Account, you could specify areas of interest and how much money you'd need to be bothered with it.
Real Soon Now
timothy
p.s. One thing to note is that many people *have* granted permission to at least one breed of spammer, which is the one using purchased lists compiled from all the places which have asked you for an email address in order to (for instance) "send you important updates" and say in the fine print that the info may be provided to other "fine" merchants
It's obvious I know, but one of, if not the chief reason that many people can't use Linux (actually, can't use anything besides Windows X or Macintosh) at work is the dysfunctional relationship that companies have with Microsoft, which goes somehthing like this:
... some of our suppliers now have a newer version of Word and send us files in it all the time. Can we read them with our old version of Word?"
... OK."
;)
SCENE ONE: The recent past
Company: "I want a word processor."
MS: "Here's MS Word."
Company: "Great! It's got an OK interface and lots of features! We'll standardize on it, and figure the cost of buying it is money well-spent."
MS: "Nice doing business with you. See you in a few months!"
Company: "What?"
MS: "Oops -- look at the time. Gotta go."
SCENE TWO: The even more recent past.
Company: "Errr
MS: "ha, ha. No. But you can buy this economical upgrade and then be using the same version they are. ha ha."
Company: "That doesn't seem very nice, but
MS: "Nice doing business with you. See you in a few months."
Company: "Hey, do you mean this keeps happening?!"
MS: "Whoops -- look at the time. Gotta go. You have a nice day, hear?"
Companies which deal in information exchanged electronically have it in their interest to insist on non-proprietary formats unless they absolutely need them, for functional reasons. (Lotus notes, say. -- but not WP docs.)
So what are good formats?
Text, for things that don't need pretty formatting
HTML, for things that need to be accessed in a variety of formats
XML - for more complicated things what need to be acessed in a variety of formats
PostScript - for manuals etc for which you need exact typographic control.
And yes, this message contains forward looking statements. It's true that not every place of business is flexible or imaginative enough to use a different color of paint, never mind an operating system other than the one in place now. But long term, I think the linux infection will keep casting shadows on hothouse-flower file formats.
As others have pointed out, now is not the same as Soon. True -- but would you rather get on the boat leaving now or the jet leaving soon?* Best case scenario I would think for companies which are unable / unwilling right now to switch to a Free / free OS would be to at least study the possibility, because sooner or later you'll have to consider it. To mix a few metaphors: Inertia is a powerful force in business, but tides do turn eventually, and this is a full moon.
Cheers,
timothy
*Too many variables left undefined, I know, but you get the point
I even previewed, I swear it! How did that closing dissapear?! I don't know.
My bad. But the page still works, I think. If not, it's here.
humbly,
timothy
(I am on the far left of the slashdot bellcurve, so pretend I am Aunt Helga for a moment ...)
... :) But hopefully someone could print this out at a friend's house or the library, or print it using the OS that came with their Compaq Presario before reformatting and installing something better.
I wrote the directions on
this page for anyone interested in connecting to an ISP using kppp.
They're not perfect, I but I meant them to be lighthearted and easy to follow.
Even still, there is an undeniable catch-22 in that someone who wanted to use these directions or any other online documentation won't have it to use from home. This is getting to be less and less of a problem as Internet access gets more and more ubiquitous - hopefully soon we'll all have DSL and kppp will be only a memory
Cheers,
timothy
mosch's #1 question was:
...)
/.! (Not just the results, of course, but the dynamics of the contest; who wins *offically,* who wins trickily, what clever hacks were used to create a fast install, which mainstream distribution goes on quickest in a reasonable / normal total install, which distribution's installer ...
1.What qualifies as a Linux install?
This is important. There seem to be quite a few linux-on-a-floppy distributions. I have not used any of them, but I would imagine that at least a few are similar in intent to the QNX demo where there is a small QNX system, dialer, broswer all on one floppy.
So would it count to slip one in the floppy drive, toggle the power switch, and say "done!"? That might sound finegally / like cheating (since the contestant wouldn't have "really" installed Linux on the computer as in put it on the hard drive), but it would create a system that was re-bootable into the GNU/Linux system as often as desired, since it's on the floppy. Just like more traditional Linux system which rely on a boot floppy.
(I'm sure someone will correct my if I'm relying on false assumptions
So, further, What will the exact rules be?
Will each competitor have to cWill the competitor have to connect to an ethernet network? Demonstrate the compilation of a kernel? start a game of nethack?
I ask not as a potential competitor, but because I find the design of contests / competitions an interesting topic to me as a professional picker of nits.
I certainly hope the results will become a feature here on
This is an important issue (ease-of-install) for any operating system, and one in which Linux still has percieved weaknesses. (I disagree with this perception, I'm just saying it's there.)
This should be a good read!
timothy
Amphigory's question is a good one!
...
There is a presumption in the post to which he responded that in fact CD-Rs have made a significant dent in software profits. I see two reasons that make me doubt they have, with the possible exception of MS operating systems.
1) Software makers make the big money by selling software to businesses, including universities. Businesses (esp. ones that are over 4 or 5 people big) can't afford piracy, long term. Does it go on? Sure, but CD-R only makes this process easier, it isn't the start of it. Businesses like support, and docs
2)People like documentation and accountability. That the accountability may be illusory for most users, the documentation is not. And it's considerably more inconvenient to make high-quality copies of documentation to accompany software. Folks will no doubt continue to exchange software, but the software industry will continue to sell boxed software for the advantages it offers. Note how well even boxed Linux distib.s sell! That's software which is free -- so someone could download it without even the risk / discomfort of illegality.
Well, you're right: DVD and USB are different things.
Re: DVD -- there might not be that many non-movie DVD articles here, but in truth it's the movie-related ones I'm interested in mostly. I think it's cool that SuSE will have a DVD distro, though! (Didn't FreeBSD have a DVD distro starting months ago? Or was that strictly a hypothetical?) I like it partly because it will encourage more people to buy DVD drives for their massive storage -- and hopefully then want more from the hardware they've already paid for. The more Free / free OS users with DVD drives, the better as far as I'm concerned. There have been a string of hope-inspiring bits about DVD lately, as the software and hardware under Linux (and hopefully soon for the BSDs) come together. And as that happens (there are several projects working on Linux video already
And as for USB, I disagree that there are no articles dealing with it -- it's been a pretty good topic of conversation, especially when it comes to discussing what will be in upcoming kernels. And there ought to be more! USB devices are handy and no longer a curiosity in either the Mac or Windows worlds
Thumbing through a magazine ("Digital Camera"? Something like that) at a local bookstore a few hours ago, I also noticed a screen-color calibration device -- with a USB connection. There are all sorts of devices which use USB -- input devices (including bar code readers), storage devices, printes, scanners, blah blah blah
And about the people in the library
Cheers,
timothy
(Since playing DVDs under Linux, till recently seemingly only a frustrating dream, now gets closer and closer ...)
And is there a USB icon, too?
timothy
At least according to this link on the turbolinux Web site.
Can anyone comment on the reputation Dell presently has in Japan?
timothy
It's interesting, eh?
Well, to me it was, link included.
timothy
This is not necessarily bad. In fact, I think it would be interesting if Microsoft were forced to explicitly position itself as the "luxury" OS, compared to the "cheapies." But the cheapies are likely to soon include not just the various full-featured UNIX-based Free / free OSes, but also the rumored-but-vaporous "non-MS machines" which so many vendors are talking about to run their cheaper-than-the-same-weight-of-dirt Internet Terminals, WWW Appliances and whatnot.
Interesting because a) it might make MS OSes better than they are (I'm no fan, but they do some things fair, middlin' or well -- and it'd be nice to see that aspect continue) and b) I don't think they could actually hold the "luxury" ground very well, which would make for Interesting Times (my favorite chinese curse
But hey -- if Linux can be made to work with lowest-common denominator machines, Great! I think the owners are going to wish for upgrades in the form of faster machines, not "That grand vision of an OS that Microsoft has but that we couldn't afford a few years ago when we bought this piece of junk PC that came with Linux
At least, that's my conjecture.
Cheers,
timothy
Playing games seems a sensible thing to do with a platform that supports it. My experience based on both high school and college (done with both a little while ago ;) )is that the people who play games are often the same ones who are curious and willing to test out the capabilities of their calculators / palm pilots etc.(In my school's case, it was the TI-81, and then the rad HPs, not to mention the Macs in the back of the journalism room.)
They (the kids who play with their stuff) are expressing natural curiosity, and often probably shouldn't be being forced to sit through school at all.
(Note: I was not a calulator player, and as a result am now failing to collect on a large CS-based salary. My mistake.)
timothy
Can't speak for today's NEC CRT monitors (but they used to make some great ones ... ), but I like their current flat panels.
...
... now, though they make some cool high-end stuff, the low-end machines are buggy and cheap-seeming (and ugly). NEC, same deal. Companies cash in respected names, ruining them in the process.
... Micron is another. But even Dell can't cut corners everywhere and expect the rep to hold. Good reputations have a much shorter shelf life than bad ones.
... one day I'll be able to afford a flat panel, too.
Nanao also is making some nice-looking flat-panels, haven't noticed CRTs with that brand in a while
Branding in the computer business unfortunately does not represent uniformity of quality, at least not as much as I'd like. Compaq used to be a good name
Dell (disclaimer: I work for them, indirectly) is one of the fewmainstream computer makers I would actually think of as having consistently high quality for home machines
timothy
Ah
timothy
This story reminds me a little bit about the French senators who want computer programming done for France to be open sourced -- it demonstrates the value that can be salvaged from tax money that's already been spent.
Is there a good reason that it could not simply be a standard clause in the contracts surrounding comptuer programming done for any government agency that the result must be reusable, barring previous conflicting licensing terms? There are all sorts of other standards imposed on nearly every government contract, and this is one that might actually add some value.
Remember, the only way the government buys something is with money it's already taken from you for your benefit, or with money it promises it will take from you later. (Also for your benefit.)
cheers,
timothy
Well, the guy's got a point! His powers of offense are awesome.
Usually the phrase is rendered "one fell swoop," but in this case, "one foul swoop" seems more accurate anyhow. And the benefit of the doubt says it is the only clever turn of phrase in the post!
Cheers,
timothy