The point is that even if you don't need the source, the kernel hackers do.
I tried Linux because I was fed up with Windows. I haven't modified or even studied the Linux source. (Well, except once in an unsuccessful attempt to find out what "cause: E000" (or whatever) means when your ISDN line disconnects) and once when I experimented with a higher HZ (didn't see a difference).
So I, personally, don't need access to the source. What I do need is for the thousands of current and potential kernel hackers out there to have access to it so that they can continue to improve it. --
Stangely enough, it didn't feel that way to me. I say strangely because it's amazing that something that can be headlined as "Married Man Sets Geeks Straight About Girls" could possibly be anything but patronising to geeks. Instead, it felt like well-meant, sincere, fatherly advice. Thanks, Robin. --
I too remember when Altavista ruled the Earth and I still use it, mostly out of habbit, when searching for things Google is no good at. Yes, there are such things. Google has its strong points and its weak points like all the rest. You can't really support a blanket statement like "Google is far better than AltaVista ever was". I feel Altavista are still the good guys regardless of any portal nonsense because you can customise that stuff out and you don't even have to accept a cookie to do it. --
We're in the muddy regions of the language waters here, but my gut feeling is that "thousands" means "two or more thousands", not "more than one thousand". --
Well, that'll help us map the DNA of the mammoth, but mapping it and finding/producing complete DNA molecules are two different things. To clone the creature, we need the latter.
I wonder if I'll ever get to try mammoth steak. --
A couple of people seem to be taking this story seriously. They must not know (any more than I did a few minutes ago) what kind of publication WWN is. I advise these people to take a look at the front page. Heck, even read a few stories. If you pretend it's The Onion, you'll laugh your lungs out. --
I too got tired of rebooting, but I solved the problem in a somewhat roundabout manner. I had a spare box lying around, and my Linux box had a Hauppauge WinTV card, so I set up the spare machine with the Encore kit and Win98 right next to the Linux box, connected video out on the decoder card to video in on the WinTV card.
With autologon, scandisk disabled, and vncserver, I was able to get rid of the monitor and input devices on the Win98 box and control it with xvncviewer.
So basically, the Windows box is now a standalone DVD player and the Linux box can function as a TV and remote.
Not very practical for most folks, but it sure is interesting. --
You forgot "it's != its" and "too != to", but the main thing is that there are about a dozen errors of grammar or spelling that are repeated over and over again and corrected over and over again on Slashdot. Some people say they'll speak however they damn well please when you correct them, most take corrections silently and try to correct their speech, and others don't care one way or the other. I've accepted the fact that I'll never make everyone care about proper language. Some people just use language like John Q. Macuser uses computers: as a tool to get a job done without studying it, learning the names of all the parts, and understanding every nuance of its operation. I no longer consider that a sign of stupidity. (Well, I try not to).
I still cringe when I see "it's" in place of "its". I can't help it. My mind involuntarily forks off a "register language error" process and my attention is divided for a moment. It's like noise on the channel and it makes it a harder for me to read the message.
Perhaps a solution could be made with a bit of code. Perfect understanding of natural language texts by a machine is a distant goal, but we don't need to aim that high. If a filter could spot "probable abuses" of a select few words and alert the poster, giving him or her a quick rundown of the proper usage, then the situation would improve drastically. --
If a newbie has floppy and cd icons on their kde/gnome panel or desktop that allows them to mount and unmount with a click, then they're in pretty good shape. If you configure an automounter for them, they're in even better shape. --
I tried downloading and running some builds a while back and even built from source once (I printed out the final link command and hung it on the wall; it was 4 pages). It never worked for me either. I did get to see viewer once, but I couldn't do anything useful with it. But now, thanks to a nice.deb in the current Debian unstable distribution, I'm finally able to run this thing. So, you should be able to try it out on those Debian boxes at least. --
Otherwise I like music with a more character and maturity, even when I'm concentrating. Preferably some of the 70s Pink Floyd or David Bowie albums, whose effect is the opposite: allowing me to calm down and concentrate on solving a problem.
I kinda feel bad about listening to Pink Floyd at work. It isn't that my work suffers; it's rather that if I'm doing anything other than just listening, I feel the music is, in a way, going to waste. If I'm not giving my full attention to (some of) Pink Floyd's music, it seems to just float on by without affecting me at all, my feelings or emotions.
Perhaps this is what people mean when they describe music as intellectual. I always thought they were just being pretentious.
For music that breaks through, no matter what I'm doing, I choose Jefferson Airplane and The Prodigy, but I can't be exposed to that much power for too long.
No, no, no, no! You're supposed to tootle him melodiously at first!:-)
(The few) people who hadn't heard this before would do well to read the whole thing.
I remember I received this list by email and along with it, a list of excuses parents wrote for their kids after they missed school. I almost died laughing. --
Well, you could say that if an X client can bring down the X server, then either the X architecture isn't robust enough or the implementation is buggy. --
Good point. I was looking at the scenario where a person was mislead into believing they could buy the Frobozz policy there and I maintain my opinion on the wrongness of such practices. I hadn't thought about the scenario you described and I wouldn't want to condemn that kind of use of the Frobozz name. --
Hmm. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something. Are you saying that you had the name of a company (say Frobozz Insurance Co.) in meta tags on your page but you weren't offering to sell people insurance policies from Frobozz Insurance Co.? Then people looking to buy a Frobozz policy would find your page, be shown policies from several other insurance companies and none from Frobozz? If that's the case I can understand why Frobozz Insurance Co. was pissed off. If that's the case, I think it was wrong of you to put them in there in the first place and it was only decent of you to remove them. --
I'm just wondering about the subject of lying about the law in general, not about whether Pez Candy inc. is doing that.
If a company's lawyers publish a document saying "You may not foo", but foo is actually perfectly legal, have they done something wrong in the eyes of the law?
I believe that if the company actually sues me for fooing, but fooing isn't illegal *and the company lawyers knew it* there are serious repercussions to the company and/or its lawyers, personally.
If there isn't a lawsuit, but merely the threat of one, what does the situation look like then? --
I found Sun's page describing the Ultra5, but it still doesn't tell me much. What's it like compared to my PII/400? How good is Linux on it? Are there case and/or cpu fans? What else do I want to know?:-) --
This is looking less and less like a test and more and more like an ambush. Still, I like to keep in mind the much repeated advice "never ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence".
I found the page you linked to very informative. I had no idea security-conscious NT admins worked so hard. --
I'm too lazy to read the article. I did read the hacker's (yes, he is a hacker) how-I-did-it piece and it didn't tell me *why* that CGI script was there. What was it doing there? Why was it installed? --
Slashdot Mirror
I tried Linux because I was fed up with Windows. I haven't modified or even studied the Linux source. (Well, except once in an unsuccessful attempt to find out what "cause: E000" (or whatever) means when your ISDN line disconnects) and once when I experimented with a higher HZ (didn't see a difference).
So I, personally, don't need access to the source. What I do need is for the thousands of current and potential kernel hackers out there to have access to it so that they can continue to improve it.
--
Stangely enough, it didn't feel that way to me. I say strangely because it's amazing that something that can be headlined as "Married Man Sets Geeks Straight About Girls" could possibly be anything but patronising to geeks. Instead, it felt like well-meant, sincere, fatherly advice. Thanks, Robin.
--
I too remember when Altavista ruled the Earth and I still use it, mostly out of habbit, when searching for things Google is no good at. Yes, there are such things. Google has its strong points and its weak points like all the rest. You can't really support a blanket statement like "Google is far better than AltaVista ever was". I feel Altavista are still the good guys regardless of any portal nonsense because you can customise that stuff out and you don't even have to accept a cookie to do it.
--
We're in the muddy regions of the language waters here, but my gut feeling is that "thousands" means "two or more thousands", not "more than one thousand".
--
You can't buy an 800-rated IA32 processor at any price so cost-effectiveness doesn't even come into play.
--
I wonder if I'll ever get to try mammoth steak.
--
A couple of people seem to be taking this story seriously. They must not know (any more than I did a few minutes ago) what kind of publication WWN is. I advise these people to take a look at the front page. Heck, even read a few stories. If you pretend it's The Onion, you'll laugh your lungs out.
--
With autologon, scandisk disabled, and vncserver, I was able to get rid of the monitor and input devices on the Win98 box and control it with xvncviewer.
So basically, the Windows box is now a standalone DVD player and the Linux box can function as a TV and remote.
Not very practical for most folks, but it sure is interesting.
--
How slowly (on a 400MHz PII)?
--
You forgot "it's != its" and "too != to", but the main thing is that there are about a dozen errors of grammar or spelling that are repeated over and over again and corrected over and over again on Slashdot. Some people say they'll speak however they damn well please when you correct them, most take corrections silently and try to correct their speech, and others don't care one way or the other. I've accepted the fact that I'll never make everyone care about proper language. Some people just use language like John Q. Macuser uses computers: as a tool to get a job done without studying it, learning the names of all the parts, and understanding every nuance of its operation. I no longer consider that a sign of stupidity. (Well, I try not to).
I still cringe when I see "it's" in place of "its". I can't help it. My mind involuntarily forks off a "register language error" process and my attention is divided for a moment. It's like noise on the channel and it makes it a harder for me to read the message.
Perhaps a solution could be made with a bit of code. Perfect understanding of natural language texts by a machine is a distant goal, but we don't need to aim that high. If a filter could spot "probable abuses" of a select few words and alert the poster, giving him or her a quick rundown of the proper usage, then the situation would improve drastically.
--
If a newbie has floppy and cd icons on their kde/gnome panel or desktop that allows them to mount and unmount with a click, then they're in pretty good shape. If you configure an automounter for them, they're in even better shape.
--
I tried downloading and running some builds a while back and even built from source once (I printed out the final link command and hung it on the wall; it was 4 pages). It never worked for me either. I did get to see viewer once, but I couldn't do anything useful with it. But now, thanks to a nice .deb in the current Debian unstable distribution, I'm finally able to run this thing. So, you should be able to try it out on those Debian boxes at least.
--
I kinda feel bad about listening to Pink Floyd at work. It isn't that my work suffers; it's rather that if I'm doing anything other than just listening, I feel the music is, in a way, going to waste. If I'm not giving my full attention to (some of) Pink Floyd's music, it seems to just float on by without affecting me at all, my feelings or emotions.
Perhaps this is what people mean when they describe music as intellectual. I always thought they were just being pretentious.
For music that breaks through, no matter what I'm doing, I choose Jefferson Airplane and The Prodigy, but I can't be exposed to that much power for too long.
Perhaps I should look into some ambience.
--
(The few) people who hadn't heard this before would do well to read the whole thing.
I remember I received this list by email and along with it, a list of excuses parents wrote for their kids after they missed school. I almost died laughing.
--
I'm sure the previous poster meant to say l10n instead of i18n, meaning they were impressed by how much of gnome had been translated.
--
Well, you could say that if an X client can bring down the X server, then either the X architecture isn't robust enough or the implementation is buggy.
--
(replace á with a to make a legal domain name)
--
Well, Steve Mann does
--
Good point. I was looking at the scenario where a person was mislead into believing they could buy the Frobozz policy there and I maintain my opinion on the wrongness of such practices. I hadn't thought about the scenario you described and I wouldn't want to condemn that kind of use of the Frobozz name.
--
It's clear these aren't made for us, but for "them". Still, I think "they" will have as hard a time as I'm having staying awake over them.
--
Hmm. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something. Are you saying that you had the name of a company (say Frobozz Insurance Co.) in meta tags on your page but you weren't offering to sell people insurance policies from Frobozz Insurance Co.? Then people looking to buy a Frobozz policy would find your page, be shown policies from several other insurance companies and none from Frobozz? If that's the case I can understand why Frobozz Insurance Co. was pissed off. If that's the case, I think it was wrong of you to put them in there in the first place and it was only decent of you to remove them.
--
If a company's lawyers publish a document saying "You may not foo", but foo is actually perfectly legal, have they done something wrong in the eyes of the law?
I believe that if the company actually sues me for fooing, but fooing isn't illegal *and the company lawyers knew it* there are serious repercussions to the company and/or its lawyers, personally.
If there isn't a lawsuit, but merely the threat of one, what does the situation look like then?
--
I found Sun's page describing the Ultra5, but it still doesn't tell me much. What's it like compared to my PII/400? How good is Linux on it? Are there case and/or cpu fans? What else do I want to know? :-)
--
I found the page you linked to very informative. I had no idea security-conscious NT admins worked so hard.
--
I'm too lazy to read the article. I did read the hacker's (yes, he is a hacker) how-I-did-it piece and it didn't tell me *why* that CGI script was there. What was it doing there? Why was it installed?
--