... is that by thrusting forward into heretofore unexplored frontiers of cluelessness, this chap might make some people think that someone who's less clueless but still fifty-one cards short of a deck (say, Jesse Berst) actually has a clue. He's stretched the spectrum, and Jesse will now appear to be closer to the center.
Yeah, I think software to read one of those adaptors that looks like a floppy but isn't would be pretty nifty too. It'd sure save me some money, since as one who hates cables, I'm looking pretty much only at Sony's Mavica models. Come to think of it, are those adaptors read-only? You could get a 16Mb card, stick it in the adaptor, stick it in the Mavica... oh, no, nevermind.:)
So... if I get GNOME, can I still run GIMP? I ask because every time I grab GIMP, I read a little doc file that says GIMP DOESN'T WORK WITH GTK+ 1.1 AND LATER. That is to say, it wants 1.0.x. Which is all well and good, except that GNOME seems to require 1.1 or later. I'm not about to sacrifice GIMP (which I use on practically a daily basis to earn my living) just to pretty up the ol' desktop, but if there's a stable GIMP that'll deal with GNOME, I might try it!
If any other journalist in the world wrote this, I'd be far more concerned. And I do mean ANY. Even, say, the guy who wrote the Y2K article for the Weekly World News. Or the advice columnist for some porn magazine.
But time and time again, Jesse Berst has demonstrated that he clearly wouldn't know a clue if it sneaked up on him and chomped his naughty bits. He's simply incapable of comprehending the idea that Microsoft could do any wrong, or that anyone else could do any right.
Months ago, I tired of amusing myself with mental games like "what color is the sky in Jesse's world?" and "how many suns are there in Jesse's sky?" Since then, whenever I configure any sort of news-handling software, I explicitly tell it to ignore anything from him.
He's just not living in the same reality as the rest of us - even the other journalists. He makes points by fiat, and fails to note that virtually everything negative he says about whatever product is competing with Microsoft is usually at least equally true of Microsoft's own products.
...that he's the only literary sort around here who has one foot in the social sciences, one foot in the geekiverse, and still finds the time to actually write about the relationship between the two.
A few years ago before I turned pro, I used to write on social factors of MUDs and stuff for ISP newsletters and local/regional tech newspapers, and one of these days when I go into semi-retirement on a tropical island (that *is* what I'm supposed to do as a techie, isn't it? world domination and scantily clad women?) maybe I'll have enough leisure time to make the level of "drivel" around here even worse.
The only time I've ever seen a "remove" phone number that was 1-800, it was an automated system, and the number was at the bottom of... a junk fax. Well, d'uh, folks. I don't see a loophole in the law saying that you don't have to pay the $500 fine if your junk fax has a 1-800 remove number at the bottom... do you?;)
Yes, "unsolicited" covers a lot of ground. But, the bill doesn't criminalize unsolicited mail.:)
There are 3 things the law criminalizes:
1. Sending unsolicited *bulk* e-mail in violation of an ISP's policies.
2. Sending UBE with forged headers.
3. Distributing spamware.
The examples you give are highly unlikely to lead to lawsuits under this law, and if they do, they're certain to be laughed out of court.:)
And yes, bandwidth is "too cheap to meter" on average - but some of us pay a larger share of the bill than others, and some folks (spammers) want everyone else to foot their bill. This helps address that particular inequity. In fact, it'll help keep bandwidth "too cheap to meter" - figures I've seen indicate that of a $19.95/month account, $2-3 a month is necessitated by excess hardware and manpower expenses due to spam.
I worked at BCFW in 1994. Quite an interesting shop. I was only a graveyard-shift MIS UNIX op (a position for which I was ridiculously overqualified:) so I got bored and left quickly. But they sure do have some toys there. They've got what I think is the world's largest installation of Sequent Dynix/PTX servers, with something like 20 Pentium CPU's each, handling a terabyte or so of data warehouse. This is all fed through SQL and TUXedo (another Penguin!) running on a couple dozen Sparcs. The stores had those Sparc-controlled terminals and POS beasties. It used to be all linked together via VSAT dishes and some kind of satellite network, which meant a good-sized thunderstorm could disrupt all the stores in a region.:)
I'm glad to see they've done this - it's really neat. Not that I'd go back and work there again because of it, mind you.:)
Actually, it's real easy to get from RedHat 2+ to RedHat 5.2... I've been running 5.1 on my laptop for a while (after running 4.2 and maybe 5.0), and just upgraded to 5.2.
I'd tended toward complete "clean" reinstalls, since I was upgrading the drive, repartitioning, or things like that, but the hardware end of things is now pretty stable... okay, VERY stable, so I tried the "Upgrade" function. I basically told the laptop what its IP address was, and where the FTP server was, and went and worked on other stuff for an hour, and wham-o, I've got a 5.2 system.
I'm a little more wary of dropping kernel RPM's in, but I might try it while I'm at it...:)
I actually read that book as a child. When I was 8 years old, my parents bought me some Pekin ducks for my birthday. (Not to be confused with Peking ducks, which is what they are *after* you cook them.) I named the first one Ping. The second one I named Pong, even though at that age I had no concept of video games. They also bought me a part-Mallard drake I named Paddle. But anyway. 'Tis a good book indeed.
I'd love to have a C version of this. I can pretty much do what I need in Perl, but now I'm eager to get more into C for CGI scripting, and K&R 2nd edition, for all its goodness, just doesn't _talk_ about how to do stuff like, say, open a filehandle piped to sendmail, or silly little crap like that.:)
My wife and I both run Linux (with a small partition for IBM PC-DOS and GEOS/New Deal Office) on laptops we bought used. They both had Win95 installed when we got them, but that lasted about as long as it took me to get them to my office. So... no return possible.
ADSL is the kind of thing I'd consider getting. Sure, it's kinda pokey, and even though BA claims to offer speeds up to 7Mbps/second, once it hits them, I'd be lucky to see 128Kbps. But compared to their highest-in-the-galaxy ISDN rates ($240 a month for unlimited local usage?!), it's damn cheap. And since the box hooks up via ethernet, it's probably really easy to do IPmasq and whatnot. Maybe next year.
I've gotta wonder... what if Linux suddenly started costing a buck per install? Would we all go use Windoze or FreeBSD or something instead? I don't have anything that uses FireWire yet (except maybe the SGI's digital camera - I have no idea what it uses!) but if I had the need for it, I'd be a lot more concerned with value than price.
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... is that by thrusting forward into heretofore unexplored frontiers of cluelessness, this chap might make some people think that someone who's less clueless but still fifty-one cards short of a deck (say, Jesse Berst) actually has a clue. He's stretched the spectrum, and Jesse will now appear to be closer to the center.
Er, actually, 4.08 is available in both Communicator (web-mail-news) and Navigator (web-only) versions. I haven't yet seen a Navigator version of 4.5.
Yeah, I think software to read one of those adaptors that looks like a floppy but isn't would be pretty nifty too. It'd sure save me some money, since as one who hates cables, I'm looking pretty much only at Sony's Mavica models. Come to think of it, are those adaptors read-only? You could get a 16Mb card, stick it in the adaptor, stick it in the Mavica... oh, no, nevermind. :)
Cool... so I guess my wife and I made the list (as a single entry) 'cos we run Linux on laptops (and pointed this out to them ;)
So... if I get GNOME, can I still run GIMP? I ask because every time I grab GIMP, I read a little doc file that says GIMP DOESN'T WORK WITH GTK+ 1.1 AND LATER. That is to say, it wants 1.0.x. Which is all well and good, except that GNOME seems to require 1.1 or later. I'm not about to sacrifice GIMP (which I use on practically a daily basis to earn my living) just to pretty up the ol' desktop, but if there's a stable GIMP that'll deal with GNOME, I might try it!
If any other journalist in the world wrote this, I'd be far more concerned. And I do mean ANY. Even, say, the guy who wrote the Y2K article for the Weekly World News. Or the advice columnist for some porn magazine.
But time and time again, Jesse Berst has demonstrated that he clearly wouldn't know a clue if it sneaked up on him and chomped his naughty bits. He's simply incapable of comprehending the idea that Microsoft could do any wrong, or that anyone else could do any right.
Months ago, I tired of amusing myself with mental games like "what color is the sky in Jesse's world?" and "how many suns are there in Jesse's sky?" Since then, whenever I configure any sort of news-handling software, I explicitly tell it to ignore anything from him.
He's just not living in the same reality as the rest of us - even the other journalists. He makes points by fiat, and fails to note that virtually everything negative he says about whatever product is competing with Microsoft is usually at least equally true of Microsoft's own products.
Man, and I only have a lowly Indy that isn't even running Linux. Interesting how the university the O2000 is going to is *really* close to Red Hat.
...that he's the only literary sort around here who has one foot in the social sciences, one foot in the geekiverse, and still finds the time to actually write about the relationship between the two.
A few years ago before I turned pro, I used to write on social factors of MUDs and stuff for ISP newsletters and local/regional tech newspapers, and one of these days when I go into semi-retirement on a tropical island (that *is* what I'm supposed to do as a techie, isn't it? world domination and scantily clad women?) maybe I'll have enough leisure time to make the level of "drivel" around here even worse.
Muhahahaha!
The only time I've ever seen a "remove" phone number that was 1-800, it was an automated system, and the number was at the bottom of... a junk fax. Well, d'uh, folks. I don't see a loophole in the law saying that you don't have to pay the $500 fine if your junk fax has a 1-800 remove number at the bottom... do you? ;)
Yes, "unsolicited" covers a lot of ground. But, the bill doesn't criminalize unsolicited mail. :)
:)
There are 3 things the law criminalizes:
1. Sending unsolicited *bulk* e-mail in violation of an ISP's policies.
2. Sending UBE with forged headers.
3. Distributing spamware.
The examples you give are highly unlikely to lead to lawsuits under this law, and if they do, they're certain to be laughed out of court.
And yes, bandwidth is "too cheap to meter" on average - but some of us pay a larger share of the bill than others, and some folks (spammers) want everyone else to foot their bill. This helps address that particular inequity. In fact, it'll help keep bandwidth "too cheap to meter" - figures I've seen indicate that of a $19.95/month account, $2-3 a month is necessitated by excess hardware and manpower expenses due to spam.
I worked at BCFW in 1994. Quite an interesting shop. I was only a graveyard-shift MIS UNIX op (a position for which I was ridiculously overqualified :) so I got bored and left quickly. But they sure do have some toys there. They've got what I think is the world's largest installation of Sequent Dynix/PTX servers, with something like 20 Pentium CPU's each, handling a terabyte or so of data warehouse. This is all fed through SQL and TUXedo (another Penguin!) running on a couple dozen Sparcs. The stores had those Sparc-controlled terminals and POS beasties. It used to be all linked together via VSAT dishes and some kind of satellite network, which meant a good-sized thunderstorm could disrupt all the stores in a region. :)
:)
I'm glad to see they've done this - it's really neat. Not that I'd go back and work there again because of it, mind you.
Actually, it's real easy to get from RedHat 2+
:)
to RedHat 5.2... I've been running 5.1 on my
laptop for a while (after running 4.2 and maybe
5.0), and just upgraded to 5.2.
I'd tended toward complete "clean" reinstalls,
since I was upgrading the drive, repartitioning,
or things like that, but the hardware end of
things is now pretty stable... okay, VERY stable,
so I tried the "Upgrade" function. I basically
told the laptop what its IP address was, and
where the FTP server was, and went and worked
on other stuff for an hour, and wham-o, I've
got a 5.2 system.
I'm a little more wary of dropping kernel RPM's
in, but I might try it while I'm at it...
I actually read that book as a child. When I was 8 years old, my parents bought me some Pekin ducks for my birthday. (Not to be confused with Peking ducks, which is what they are *after* you cook them.) I named the first one Ping. The second one I named Pong, even though at that age I had no concept of video games. They also bought me a part-Mallard drake I named Paddle. But anyway. 'Tis a good book indeed.
I'd love to have a C version of this. I can pretty much do what I need in Perl, but now I'm eager to get more into C for CGI scripting, and K&R 2nd edition, for all its goodness, just doesn't _talk_ about how to do stuff like, say, open a filehandle piped to sendmail, or silly little crap like that. :)
My wife and I both run Linux (with a small partition for IBM PC-DOS and GEOS/New Deal Office) on laptops we bought used. They both had Win95 installed when we got them, but that lasted about as long as it took me to get them to my office. So... no return possible.
ADSL is the kind of thing I'd consider getting. Sure, it's kinda pokey, and even though BA claims to offer speeds up to 7Mbps/second, once it hits them, I'd be lucky to see 128Kbps. But compared to their highest-in-the-galaxy ISDN rates ($240 a month for unlimited local usage?!), it's damn cheap. And since the box hooks up via ethernet, it's probably really easy to do IPmasq and whatnot. Maybe next year.
I've gotta wonder... what if Linux suddenly started costing a buck per install? Would we all go use Windoze or FreeBSD or something instead? I don't have anything that uses FireWire yet (except maybe the SGI's digital camera - I have no idea what it uses!) but if I had the need for it, I'd be a lot more concerned with value than price.