"*cough* 1/5th world's population *cough* 1/2 our GDP and 1/20 of the world's *cough* nuclear weapons *cough*"
Bad math on my part. I was thinking of the US's $10 trillion GDP, and that somehow got perverted in my mind as 1/10. China's GDP is 1/8 of the world's, not 1/20.
You know, with only a little effort, you could probably rig a mailbox that sorts out mail by size and weight. Anything that feels like an ad gets dumped into a shredder, and the shredded paper pours out into the recycling bin sitting in the driveway next to the mailbox...
"I recall that over 30% of americans doubt that man ever landed on moon."
I seem to be in the dark. Where does that number come from?
"I'm certainly one of those who think that it would have been highly unlikely with 1960's technology."
I take it you've never seen a Saturn V, or even an F-1 engine.:)
"Now yes, then unlikely. "
I find it amusing that you make that distinction, since "modern" US (manned) space flight capabilities is built on 70's technology. Enterprise and Columbia are not much younger than I am. Though I suppose it's more advanced than the Soyuz capsules the Russians have been using since, what, the 60's?
"It is not so much that you wen't to moon, but that you beat your nemesis while doing it. "
Few people remember that there was a lot of competition between various parties to be the first to fly non-stop over the Atlantic. The only thing important in the history books now, though, is that Lindbergh (sp?) was the first, not that he beat a whole mess of others (especially European efforts) in the process. As far as most students are concerned, good ol' Chuck woke up one morning and said "I think I'll fly over the Atlantic today..."
Of course, they also fail to remember that he was an outspoken proponent of the Nazis, but that's something altogether different.
Enemies come and go. But the fact that we're now buddy-buddy with the UK and Canada doesn't mean that monuments like USS Constitution or Ft. McHenry have any less meaning as far as national identity are concerned.
"No nemesis, no true nationalism"
Perhaps you failed to notice all those yellow ribbons they had in Washington State a few days ago, or all the pro-US flamebait in that one recent/. editorial about the failure of hyperreality.
"Corporatism and stock markest yes"
Those concepts don't have faces to carve into mountains or places with hourly tours. And if you can't erect large chunks of marble somewhere, what's the fun in that?
"Having established this status some puny asian"
*cough* 1/5th world's population *cough* 1/2 our GDP and 1/20 of the world's *cough* nuclear weapons *cough*
"U.s. still rules and money matters"
Money may provide the illusion of power to those that have it, but buying yes-men isn't true power. Power is the ability to inspire people, to sway their emotions. Napoleon's and Hitler's troops didn't take over Europe because they were the best-paid troops, but because they believed in what they were fighting for and were inspired by their leaders. The US lost Vietnam not because the North Vietnamese were richer, but because they were more inspired.
Let me let you in on a little secret: When Sputnik I was launched, the US was still enjoying the post-war economic boom. There was a nuclear missile gap with the Soviets heavily in favor of the US. Hell, we probably could've gotten away with a first strike at that point. The Soviets were a distant #2 by all respects. However, the Soviets were the ones who put a glorified basketball into space. By showing their technological and economic expertise (nevermind that it was behind America's), they were able to both frighten the West and inspire other communist movements.
THAT'S power.
If the Chinese land on the Moon, there will be a lot of letters to Congress saying "How come they can do it but we can't?" Having multi-gigahertz PCs and The Matrix on DVD is poor consolation for the ability to point to something that grand and say "We did that."
Besides, what good is having all this money if we don't spend it?
"And even if India and China both put a man on moon the american public is going to care because?"
Because after thirty years, landing on the moon has become an utterly American piece of history. It is a sign of national identity to be able to say "We've done what nobody else has done before or since."
Because as can be witnessed by that "silly plane" you mentioned, America loves to hero-worship. Niel Armstrong and the other 11 men that landed on the moon during the Apollo program are probably the most idolized Americans of the 20th Century, if not American history.
And, finally, because Americans love memorials. the USS Arizona still sits on the bottom of Pearl Harbor, even though it was sunk almost 60 years ago. Gettysburg has so many monuments that it wasn't feasable to shoot the movie there. The concept of footprints that will be on the surface of the moon for thousands of years appeals to us, and the idea of the Chinese or anybody else possibly messing that up disgusts us.
Mark my words: Within a year of a non-American setting foot on the Moon, the US will launch a mission to Mars.
Other interesting notes about the GSLV is that it puts India in the Heavy Lifter Club (USA, Russia/CIS, EU, Japan, China). The rocket can put about 5 tonnes into LEO, and the US Gemini capsules only weighed around 3 tonnes each. Now, if they really get their act together, and/or buy Russian technology, they have a small chance of beating out China as Space-Faring Power #3.
Things like this happen, and people still say school vouchers are a bad idea? Anything that solves the problems with public schooling NOW instead of waiting for buerocracy to get around to it is a good idea.
The probelm lies in the fact that public schooling as it stands now is less a place of education and more a horrific cross between daycare and a prison.
Consider:
1.) You are legally obligated to attend. Any attempt to leave before the powers that be allow it will be punished, often by having to stay longer than normal.
2.) Except for certain times of day, all people within the building must be in their assigned room, or must have a valid excuse to be out and about. Otherwise, you'll be punished, often by having to stay longer than usual.
3.) If you are found out and about when you are supposed to be within the building, law enforcement will take you back against your will.
4.) The state decides how long you must stay.
All three of these statements apply equally well to both schools and prisons. To this day I refer to my time in high school as my incarceration.
When you force a bunch of people into a building who would rather not be there, of course there is going to be tension, and of course violence is going to break out. The problem isn't the teachers, the problem isn't the parents, the problem is the concept of manditory public schooling. Forcing people to do things against their will has a history of pissing them off. Even Rome had their slave revolts.
And getting out isn't all that easy, either. Even if you are 16 and legally able to drop out of school, the state often requires that you must wait until after you would have graduated high school to try to get your GED. (And if you can study for a few months to get a diploma that is the equivalent of four years of public schooling, what does that say about the quality of the education going on within these schools?)
If you ask me (which you probably won't), public schooling should be just that: public. Those that do not want to attend should not be forced to attend. On the other hand, those that do want to attend, reguardless of circumstance, should be allowed to. High school drop-outs or those older than the age of 18 shouldn't be penalized by having to pay the local community college to get what others have for free by virtue of age.
...
I'm sorry, but any building with that few windows has GOT to be a jail...
"no difference between the grover voice over and they regular Yoda"
smacking forehead
Grover = Frank Oz
Yoda = Frank Oz
No shit they sound the same! And, if you think about it, Yoda sounds an awful lot like Miss Piggy, too! That's because 90% of the Muppets you see today are part of Henson's maniacal scheme to develop a mutant strain of Frank Oz clones. Where do you think the idea of the "Clone Wars" came from?
... while the real Frank Oz has been consigned to a life of obscurity, last seen as an employee of the Illinois Department of Corrections. "One unused prophylactic, one soiled..."
"How many times have i read on/. someone saying "i haven't bought a CD in months - it's all Napster, dOOd!"... ?"
That appearantly doesn't affect the ever-increasing profits of the record companies. It'd seem that this is a either a voal minority, or these people weren't going to buy CDs anyway.
"SubPop Records is not RedHat. How do music companies of the future make any money? Music doesn't require tech support, it doesn't need service and you don't need to customize it."
(If they keep pushing localization and encryption schemes, they will...)
They'll make money just like everybody else: selling high-quality physical copies of digital information. They are two companies that offer digital media on a CD. One happens to be music, the other happens to be an operating system.
Looking at Mandrake's pricing scheme, three CDs-worth of OS (with a few months of e-mail installation support and a few books) is about the same price as two CD albums (give or take a buck). Ignoring the packaging, e-mail support, and texts, this suggests that the information on the OS CDs is worth 33% less than the information on the music CDs. On top of that, all of the information on these CDs (and the texts) is available for free, legally, over the internet.
In spite of offering a product that is appearantly worth less money, and in spite of its widespread availablity for free, Mandrake seems to be doing fine. My local Wal-Mart in Middle-of-Nowhere, Louisiana doesn't have RedHat, but it has Mandrake.
"Don't be silly. They don't give away 75 years of free service. "
Yes, I was being sarcastic, but that still doesn't change the fact that I seem to get a free month of AOL once a month or so. I doubt I'm in the minority, but AOL had the money to buy out Time-Warner.
"You assume that people are interested in more the visuals more than the story."
Audio and visual effects is appearantly the difference between a $10 movie ticket and a $3 paperback. It's why people flock to Best Buy and not Barnes & Noble's when new works of fiction come out. It's why movies like The Hunt for Red October or The Princess Bride make enough money to justify being published on DVD even though:
1.) VHS versions of them have been available for years.
2.) These movies have made the rounds on cable networks many times over.
3.) They're based on widely-available best-selling novels.
Not that the majority of films put out by Hollywood actually have a meaningful story worth spending money on...
... since the Powers that Be here at/. don't think it's article-worthy...
(OK, I'll stop whining)
India has successfully launched their GSLV rocket today, putting a 1.5 tonne satellite into geosynchronous orbit. This means they've joined the heavy-lifter club (US, Russia/CIS, Japan, China, EU).
The GSLV also has the capability to put heavy things into LEO. Heavy things, like, oh, I dunno... a space capsule? It's got the lift capability for a Gemini capsule with a tonne to spare...
"so easy that any user can be guided through the process over the telephone"
Chapter 3, "Unattended Installations of Microsoft Windows 2000 Server." Total estimated lesson time: 2 hours, 50 minutes.
Besides, the whole point of unattended installs is that there shouldn't be anybody whose hand you have to hold. Wholly within the realm of the IT people.
"the process can be completed in 15 minutes"
That depends entirely upon the network architecture.
"the end user doesn't need to have any boot floppies etc"
Only if you have PXE NICs. If you don't, your options are to pass out floppies, or go through and install them on all the machines. Guess which one would be easier.
"So when a user messes up their PC, telephone helpdesk dudes spend 5 minutes starting the rebuild process instead of 2 hours trying to untangle whatever the user has done"
If the method I outlined earlier is used, Win 2K takes over right after the first reboot (after formatting the HDD and copying over bare-bones system files). Beyond that point (ie. for most of the install process), if something goes wrong, it's Win 2K's fault, not the network's.
But this is besides the point. You're supposed to test these things out before you actually commit to them, and do this after-hours so as not to interrupt anybody with computer down-time or boku network traffic. If you don't, you shouldn't be doing this for a living.
"all their apps will be available and configured for the user also."
This is a part of the install process, not RIS. This is something you modify the command line execution of winnt32.exe or the answer file for. Especially since I don't believe the RIS Wizard will let you do this...
"there are some big headaches with scaling these approaches."
"If someone shares a movie, they aren't going to buy it."
If someone shares a CD, nobody will buy music any more.
If Linux is available on the web free for download, nobody will buy it.
If AOL keeps giving out CDs with 75 years of free service, nobody will buy it.
If I download some grainy version of The Matrix recorded in a theater with a video camera, I'm not going to buy the Dolby 5.1 DVD.
It would appear that your argument doesn't hold water. Next!
"What's wrong with crime prevention."
Crime prevention in general is one thing. The methods used to prevent crime are something else. Bugging everybody's house would do wonders for crime prevention...
"so why should it be any different when try and stop other kinds of crime that costs money?"
Because the methodology is questionable. If I buy a bottle of Windex from Wal-Mart, should I have to ask Wal-Mart's permission every time I want to clean a window? If I let somebody borrow it, should I be thrown in jail for stealing from Wal-Mart?
"Games, which people constantly defend the pirating of, cost millions of dollars to create."
... and yet, with all this piracy going on, the games industry is more profitable than the movie industry (which, BTW, has the MPAA out there protecting its interests). Imagine that!
I also know several game programmers. The money doesn't go to their paycheck, the money goes to the box, the manual, the CD stamping machine...
"How would you feel if something you'd spent 6-months of your life creating was being given away free? "
I probably wouldn't care, because I'd have already gotten my salary, and every iota of code I write belongs to the compnany.
You know, just a few weeks ago I watched Don Henly and Alanis Morisette (I know I spelled something wrong there) DEFEND Napster before Congress. It would appear to me that at least a number of artists are happier with this kind of exchange than having to deal with the publishers.
"It's never the big boss that gets hurt. Not Julia Roberts or Leonardo Di Caprio. It's the man who's packing the videos for $8/hour. It's the guy making them. He's the one losing the money. "
Thank you for making my point: This doesn't affect the artists, only the publishers.
By the way, you've lost me a little here. You're trying to defend the guy who packs videos. Are you against piracy, or are you against a new format that would cost him his job?
Re:Mozilla vs. Konq, development time...
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QT Mozilla Port
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Mozilla vs. King Konq... perhaps we're taking this whole Japanese movie monster name thing a little too far...
The aforementioned MCSE training book has a review question:
What is the best way to secure files and folders that you share on NTFS partitions?
And, according the appendix, the answer is:
Put the files that you want to share in a shared folder and keep the default shared folder permission (the Everyone group with the Full Control permission for the shared folder). Assign NTFS permissions to users and groups to control access to all contents in the shared folder or to individual files.
It would appear, then, that they're trying to ween people (at least the technically savvy) away from share permissions. Since they also suggest educating network users on good sharing habits, it seems safe to assume that they'd rather everybody do it this way.
(Personally, I would have used the network share permissions to impose slightly more restrictive access over a network connection, but that's just paranoid me)
Whether this is just to make management of permissions easier, or if this is part of a sinister plot to make sure MS has access to your hard drive when.Net arrives remains to be seen.:)
Speaking of paranoia, CYA legal statement: The above quoted material is copyright 2000 Microsoft Corporation and is reproduced without permission.
Re:So it screws the networks. So what?
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Calling Out TiVo
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Nah, I think they take the #2 slot to cable companies. If the television stations are receiving their funding to broadcast through commercials, then why do we have to pay the cable companies?
"as far as I know there is no linux distro that will support unattended setup of windows 2k pro workstations in this way."
All that is really required to install Win 2K over a network is access to the shared distribution files (via existing OS, client boot disk, or network boot), and the ability to run winnt.exe or winnt32.exe (depending on whether you have an 8/16-bit or 32-bit MS OS). If you want unattended installations, you modify the command string and make an answer file available.
I don't believe it'd take more than a kilobyte of script to automatically point the remote boots to the distribution server (probably through Samba), so there seems to only be one thing that might prevent installing Win2K over the network: Whether or not you can run the installation program.
You have two choices: winnt32.exe under Wine, or winnt.exe under DOSEmu (ie. FreeDOS). Generally speaking, all these initial installation programs do is install a bare-bones version of Win2K onto the computer locally, and then reboot to it to finish the installation (or at least you can configure them to do so). If Wine or DOSEmu can't handle it alone, I'd wager that having an install of Win9x or MS-DOS handy for these programs to access would fix the problem.
So, it would appear that the only thing in the way of Linux supporting RIS-like services for Win2K Pro would be a lack of a snazzy GUI script/program with bells and whistles. I'd do it myself, but I'm not a programmer.
If anybody sees any glaring omissions, please let me know.
"Setting up W2K shares is nothing more than a few mouse clicks"
Preparing to share is a different story. Win 2k is rigged to get you to use NTFS permissions exclusively to regulate access (Microsoft texts tell you to just give the Everybody group Full Control permissions).
Once you look at configuring NTFS permissions, you're faced with a monolithic list of access control options (especially if you click on the "advanced" button), many of which seemingly overlap ("Write" and "Modify?" "Read" and "List Folder Contents?"). While I don't have the network admin experience to be able to say whether NTFS or Linux's permission structure (user/group/other, read/write/execute) is better, I do know that chapters 14 and 15 ("Securing Network Resources with NTFS Permissions" and "Administering Shared Folders," respectively) of Microsoft's MCSE Training Kit -- Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional have a total "estimated lesson time" of just over 3 hours.
Short answer: security/technical reasons. It's a limitation of the client/server model, not the OS.
The whole reason for having logins and passwords on your network is to be able to regulate access to resources. If you're going to share resources on such a network, then you're also going to have to regulate who has access to that resource.
In such an environment, setting up a share is always going to be a technical issue, not for the faint of heart. You're going to have to know who you want to share with and how much control you want them to have.
Trying to make Samba work more easily for the non-technical is like trying to design AutoCAD or Pro/Engineer for the non-drafter. There's a point where, if it needs to be THAT simplistic, you should consider using Paintbrush instead.
The same is true for setting up shares in Win 2k as a clueless newbie. Windows 9x simplifies things so that you're pretty much sharing an object with everybody, or not sharing at all. Sharing in 2k is a wee bit more complicated. It's tied in to the user log-ins, so when you share an object in 2k, you have to go about picking users or groups to have access, sifting through the 25 different access control options...
Samba is aimed at the "real" (client/server) networking crowd, and in that it seems to be doing quite well. I'd say Samba and Win 2k sharing are about the same difficulty to set up, with extra marks going to Samba for not making me go through one of those damned wizards...:)
"the skill and effort required to install and configure it is not."
... but still less than the corresponding costs of a Win 2k Server liscence (any flavor) and all the corresponding CALs. The larger your organization, the more CALs you'll need to buy to support Win 2k Server, and the more tempting it will be to use Samba instead.
Besides, installation of components in Linux is simpler than Windows (no rebooting), and the know-how needed to properly configure it will take an hour, maybe two to glean from the HOWTOs.
"You have to consider the cost of employing someone with the required skills"
... or you can be smart enough to hire someone who can learn the skills
Besides, the box of a Win 2k implementation might as well say "MCSE Not Included" right on it. At least with Linux you won't have to spend $1000's for the software on top of IT salaries
"Windows supports unattended installations"
... as do several Linux distros...
"provided the configuration settings are correctly specified."
I think 2k Server comes with 10, not 5. I believe 5 is the number of file-and-print connections you're allowed on 2k Pro and ME. Not that it matters much...
My question is what kind of affect, if any, this will have on Microsoft's Win 2k Sever Family sales. Having to bend over to pay for networking liscences (on top of server and workstation liscences) can't be all that popular among their customers.
It's not granular, it's randomly fuzzy (quantum fluctuations). Slight difference.
If space-time was granular as you suggest, Heisenberg wouldn't be an issue. You wouldn't have to check every point in the universe to find an electron.
"The reason why nothing can move faster than light itself is that god used fixed integer math."
You seem to be confusing "fixed integer math" with "real, non-zero rest mass." Though quantum mechanics suggest that you might be able to tunnel through the light barrier to some extent...
"To get around that limitation he's however considering adding a teleportation feature in a future release."
FTL of any sort would either violate relativity or causality. I'd personally rather have causality for peace-of-mind (I like free will), but relativity has a good deal of proof...
Slashdot Mirror
Bad math on my part. I was thinking of the US's $10 trillion GDP, and that somehow got perverted in my mind as 1/10. China's GDP is 1/8 of the world's, not 1/20.
You know, with only a little effort, you could probably rig a mailbox that sorts out mail by size and weight. Anything that feels like an ad gets dumped into a shredder, and the shredded paper pours out into the recycling bin sitting in the driveway next to the mailbox...
I seem to be in the dark. Where does that number come from?
"I'm certainly one of those who think that it would have been highly unlikely with 1960's technology."
I take it you've never seen a Saturn V, or even an F-1 engine. :)
"Now yes, then unlikely. "
I find it amusing that you make that distinction, since "modern" US (manned) space flight capabilities is built on 70's technology. Enterprise and Columbia are not much younger than I am. Though I suppose it's more advanced than the Soyuz capsules the Russians have been using since, what, the 60's?
"It is not so much that you wen't to moon, but that you beat your nemesis while doing it. "
Few people remember that there was a lot of competition between various parties to be the first to fly non-stop over the Atlantic. The only thing important in the history books now, though, is that Lindbergh (sp?) was the first, not that he beat a whole mess of others (especially European efforts) in the process. As far as most students are concerned, good ol' Chuck woke up one morning and said "I think I'll fly over the Atlantic today..."
Of course, they also fail to remember that he was an outspoken proponent of the Nazis, but that's something altogether different.
Enemies come and go. But the fact that we're now buddy-buddy with the UK and Canada doesn't mean that monuments like USS Constitution or Ft. McHenry have any less meaning as far as national identity are concerned.
"No nemesis, no true nationalism"
Perhaps you failed to notice all those yellow ribbons they had in Washington State a few days ago, or all the pro-US flamebait in that one recent /. editorial about the failure of hyperreality.
"Corporatism and stock markest yes"
Those concepts don't have faces to carve into mountains or places with hourly tours. And if you can't erect large chunks of marble somewhere, what's the fun in that?
"Having established this status some puny asian"
*cough* 1/5th world's population *cough* 1/2 our GDP and 1/20 of the world's *cough* nuclear weapons *cough*
"U.s. still rules and money matters"
Money may provide the illusion of power to those that have it, but buying yes-men isn't true power. Power is the ability to inspire people, to sway their emotions. Napoleon's and Hitler's troops didn't take over Europe because they were the best-paid troops, but because they believed in what they were fighting for and were inspired by their leaders. The US lost Vietnam not because the North Vietnamese were richer, but because they were more inspired.
Let me let you in on a little secret: When Sputnik I was launched, the US was still enjoying the post-war economic boom. There was a nuclear missile gap with the Soviets heavily in favor of the US. Hell, we probably could've gotten away with a first strike at that point. The Soviets were a distant #2 by all respects. However, the Soviets were the ones who put a glorified basketball into space. By showing their technological and economic expertise (nevermind that it was behind America's), they were able to both frighten the West and inspire other communist movements.
THAT'S power.
If the Chinese land on the Moon, there will be a lot of letters to Congress saying "How come they can do it but we can't?" Having multi-gigahertz PCs and The Matrix on DVD is poor consolation for the ability to point to something that grand and say "We did that."
Besides, what good is having all this money if we don't spend it?
2.) They weren't ALL jet pilots. There was at least one geologist sent up that I can think of.
Actually, from what I've heard, there'll be a good deal of water spray. Water makes a good coolant and shock absorber, you know...
Guppy06 - please spell check.
Where's the fun in that? And what's the point in spell-checking when /. is never going to post it, anyway? Oh, wait a sec...
Because after thirty years, landing on the moon has become an utterly American piece of history. It is a sign of national identity to be able to say "We've done what nobody else has done before or since."
Because as can be witnessed by that "silly plane" you mentioned, America loves to hero-worship. Niel Armstrong and the other 11 men that landed on the moon during the Apollo program are probably the most idolized Americans of the 20th Century, if not American history.
And, finally, because Americans love memorials. the USS Arizona still sits on the bottom of Pearl Harbor, even though it was sunk almost 60 years ago. Gettysburg has so many monuments that it wasn't feasable to shoot the movie there. The concept of footprints that will be on the surface of the moon for thousands of years appeals to us, and the idea of the Chinese or anybody else possibly messing that up disgusts us.
Mark my words: Within a year of a non-American setting foot on the Moon, the US will launch a mission to Mars.
Other interesting notes about the GSLV is that it puts India in the Heavy Lifter Club (USA, Russia/CIS, EU, Japan, China). The rocket can put about 5 tonnes into LEO, and the US Gemini capsules only weighed around 3 tonnes each. Now, if they really get their act together, and/or buy Russian technology, they have a small chance of beating out China as Space-Faring Power #3.
The probelm lies in the fact that public schooling as it stands now is less a place of education and more a horrific cross between daycare and a prison.
Consider:
All three of these statements apply equally well to both schools and prisons. To this day I refer to my time in high school as my incarceration.When you force a bunch of people into a building who would rather not be there, of course there is going to be tension, and of course violence is going to break out. The problem isn't the teachers, the problem isn't the parents, the problem is the concept of manditory public schooling. Forcing people to do things against their will has a history of pissing them off. Even Rome had their slave revolts.
And getting out isn't all that easy, either. Even if you are 16 and legally able to drop out of school, the state often requires that you must wait until after you would have graduated high school to try to get your GED. (And if you can study for a few months to get a diploma that is the equivalent of four years of public schooling, what does that say about the quality of the education going on within these schools?)
If you ask me (which you probably won't), public schooling should be just that: public. Those that do not want to attend should not be forced to attend. On the other hand, those that do want to attend, reguardless of circumstance, should be allowed to. High school drop-outs or those older than the age of 18 shouldn't be penalized by having to pay the local community college to get what others have for free by virtue of age.
I'm sorry, but any building with that few windows has GOT to be a jail...
smacking forehead
Grover = Frank Oz
Yoda = Frank Oz
No shit they sound the same! And, if you think about it, Yoda sounds an awful lot like Miss Piggy, too! That's because 90% of the Muppets you see today are part of Henson's maniacal scheme to develop a mutant strain of Frank Oz clones. Where do you think the idea of the "Clone Wars" came from?
That appearantly doesn't affect the ever-increasing profits of the record companies. It'd seem that this is a either a voal minority, or these people weren't going to buy CDs anyway.
"SubPop Records is not RedHat. How do music companies of the future make any money? Music doesn't require tech support, it doesn't need service and you don't need to customize it."
(If they keep pushing localization and encryption schemes, they will...)
They'll make money just like everybody else: selling high-quality physical copies of digital information. They are two companies that offer digital media on a CD. One happens to be music, the other happens to be an operating system.
Looking at Mandrake's pricing scheme, three CDs-worth of OS (with a few months of e-mail installation support and a few books) is about the same price as two CD albums (give or take a buck). Ignoring the packaging, e-mail support, and texts, this suggests that the information on the OS CDs is worth 33% less than the information on the music CDs. On top of that, all of the information on these CDs (and the texts) is available for free, legally, over the internet.
In spite of offering a product that is appearantly worth less money, and in spite of its widespread availablity for free, Mandrake seems to be doing fine. My local Wal-Mart in Middle-of-Nowhere, Louisiana doesn't have RedHat, but it has Mandrake.
"Don't be silly. They don't give away 75 years of free service. "
Yes, I was being sarcastic, but that still doesn't change the fact that I seem to get a free month of AOL once a month or so. I doubt I'm in the minority, but AOL had the money to buy out Time-Warner.
"You assume that people are interested in more the visuals more than the story."
Audio and visual effects is appearantly the difference between a $10 movie ticket and a $3 paperback. It's why people flock to Best Buy and not Barnes & Noble's when new works of fiction come out. It's why movies like The Hunt for Red October or The Princess Bride make enough money to justify being published on DVD even though:
Not that the majority of films put out by Hollywood actually have a meaningful story worth spending money on...(OK, I'll stop whining)
India has successfully launched their GSLV rocket today, putting a 1.5 tonne satellite into geosynchronous orbit. This means they've joined the heavy-lifter club (US, Russia/CIS, Japan, China, EU).
The GSLV also has the capability to put heavy things into LEO. Heavy things, like, oh, I dunno... a space capsule? It's got the lift capability for a Gemini capsule with a tonne to spare...
Chapter 3, "Unattended Installations of Microsoft Windows 2000 Server." Total estimated lesson time: 2 hours, 50 minutes.
Besides, the whole point of unattended installs is that there shouldn't be anybody whose hand you have to hold. Wholly within the realm of the IT people.
"the process can be completed in 15 minutes"
That depends entirely upon the network architecture.
"the end user doesn't need to have any boot floppies etc"
Only if you have PXE NICs. If you don't, your options are to pass out floppies, or go through and install them on all the machines. Guess which one would be easier.
"So when a user messes up their PC, telephone helpdesk dudes spend 5 minutes starting the rebuild process instead of 2 hours trying to untangle whatever the user has done"
If the method I outlined earlier is used, Win 2K takes over right after the first reboot (after formatting the HDD and copying over bare-bones system files). Beyond that point (ie. for most of the install process), if something goes wrong, it's Win 2K's fault, not the network's.
But this is besides the point. You're supposed to test these things out before you actually commit to them, and do this after-hours so as not to interrupt anybody with computer down-time or boku network traffic. If you don't, you shouldn't be doing this for a living.
"all their apps will be available and configured for the user also."
This is a part of the install process, not RIS. This is something you modify the command line execution of winnt32.exe or the answer file for. Especially since I don't believe the RIS Wizard will let you do this...
"there are some big headaches with scaling these approaches."
You mean like juggling CALs?
"What's wrong with crime prevention."
Crime prevention in general is one thing. The methods used to prevent crime are something else. Bugging everybody's house would do wonders for crime prevention...
"so why should it be any different when try and stop other kinds of crime that costs money?"
Because the methodology is questionable. If I buy a bottle of Windex from Wal-Mart, should I have to ask Wal-Mart's permission every time I want to clean a window? If I let somebody borrow it, should I be thrown in jail for stealing from Wal-Mart?
"Games, which people constantly defend the pirating of, cost millions of dollars to create."
I also know several game programmers. The money doesn't go to their paycheck, the money goes to the box, the manual, the CD stamping machine...
"How would you feel if something you'd spent 6-months of your life creating was being given away free? "
I probably wouldn't care, because I'd have already gotten my salary, and every iota of code I write belongs to the compnany.
You know, just a few weeks ago I watched Don Henly and Alanis Morisette (I know I spelled something wrong there) DEFEND Napster before Congress. It would appear to me that at least a number of artists are happier with this kind of exchange than having to deal with the publishers.
"It's never the big boss that gets hurt. Not Julia Roberts or Leonardo Di Caprio. It's the man who's packing the videos for $8/hour. It's the guy making them. He's the one losing the money. "
Thank you for making my point: This doesn't affect the artists, only the publishers.
By the way, you've lost me a little here. You're trying to defend the guy who packs videos. Are you against piracy, or are you against a new format that would cost him his job?
Mozilla vs. King Konq... perhaps we're taking this whole Japanese movie monster name thing a little too far...
(Personally, I would have used the network share permissions to impose slightly more restrictive access over a network connection, but that's just paranoid me)
Whether this is just to make management of permissions easier, or if this is part of a sinister plot to make sure MS has access to your hard drive when .Net arrives remains to be seen. :)
Speaking of paranoia, CYA legal statement: The above quoted material is copyright 2000 Microsoft Corporation and is reproduced without permission.
Nah, I think they take the #2 slot to cable companies. If the television stations are receiving their funding to broadcast through commercials, then why do we have to pay the cable companies?
All that is really required to install Win 2K over a network is access to the shared distribution files (via existing OS, client boot disk, or network boot), and the ability to run winnt.exe or winnt32.exe (depending on whether you have an 8/16-bit or 32-bit MS OS). If you want unattended installations, you modify the command string and make an answer file available.
I don't believe it'd take more than a kilobyte of script to automatically point the remote boots to the distribution server (probably through Samba), so there seems to only be one thing that might prevent installing Win2K over the network: Whether or not you can run the installation program.
You have two choices: winnt32.exe under Wine, or winnt.exe under DOSEmu (ie. FreeDOS). Generally speaking, all these initial installation programs do is install a bare-bones version of Win2K onto the computer locally, and then reboot to it to finish the installation (or at least you can configure them to do so). If Wine or DOSEmu can't handle it alone, I'd wager that having an install of Win9x or MS-DOS handy for these programs to access would fix the problem.
So, it would appear that the only thing in the way of Linux supporting RIS-like services for Win2K Pro would be a lack of a snazzy GUI script/program with bells and whistles. I'd do it myself, but I'm not a programmer.
If anybody sees any glaring omissions, please let me know.
This is an upshot because of why? If we have to keep an eye out for mad scientists while we develop the cure for cancer or AIDS, so be it.
Preparing to share is a different story. Win 2k is rigged to get you to use NTFS permissions exclusively to regulate access (Microsoft texts tell you to just give the Everybody group Full Control permissions).
Once you look at configuring NTFS permissions, you're faced with a monolithic list of access control options (especially if you click on the "advanced" button), many of which seemingly overlap ("Write" and "Modify?" "Read" and "List Folder Contents?"). While I don't have the network admin experience to be able to say whether NTFS or Linux's permission structure (user/group/other, read/write/execute) is better, I do know that chapters 14 and 15 ("Securing Network Resources with NTFS Permissions" and "Administering Shared Folders," respectively) of Microsoft's MCSE Training Kit -- Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional have a total "estimated lesson time" of just over 3 hours.
Short answer: security/technical reasons. It's a limitation of the client/server model, not the OS.
The whole reason for having logins and passwords on your network is to be able to regulate access to resources. If you're going to share resources on such a network, then you're also going to have to regulate who has access to that resource.
In such an environment, setting up a share is always going to be a technical issue, not for the faint of heart. You're going to have to know who you want to share with and how much control you want them to have.
Trying to make Samba work more easily for the non-technical is like trying to design AutoCAD or Pro/Engineer for the non-drafter. There's a point where, if it needs to be THAT simplistic, you should consider using Paintbrush instead.
Samba is aimed at the "real" (client/server) networking crowd, and in that it seems to be doing quite well. I'd say Samba and Win 2k sharing are about the same difficulty to set up, with extra marks going to Samba for not making me go through one of those damned wizards... :)
No no no, the proper WarCraft II quote is "WE'VE got explosives!" Or "Bombs are great!"
Besides, installation of components in Linux is simpler than Windows (no rebooting), and the know-how needed to properly configure it will take an hour, maybe two to glean from the HOWTOs.
"You have to consider the cost of employing someone with the required skills"
Besides, the box of a Win 2k implementation might as well say "MCSE Not Included" right on it. At least with Linux you won't have to spend $1000's for the software on top of IT salaries
"Windows supports unattended installations"
"provided the configuration settings are correctly specified."
Like I said, "MCSE Not Included."
My question is what kind of affect, if any, this will have on Microsoft's Win 2k Sever Family sales. Having to bend over to pay for networking liscences (on top of server and workstation liscences) can't be all that popular among their customers.
Who's bright idea was the CAL, anyway?
It's not granular, it's randomly fuzzy (quantum fluctuations). Slight difference.
If space-time was granular as you suggest, Heisenberg wouldn't be an issue. You wouldn't have to check every point in the universe to find an electron.
"The reason why nothing can move faster than light itself is that god used fixed integer math."
You seem to be confusing "fixed integer math" with "real, non-zero rest mass." Though quantum mechanics suggest that you might be able to tunnel through the light barrier to some extent...
"To get around that limitation he's however considering adding a teleportation feature in a future release."
FTL of any sort would either violate relativity or causality. I'd personally rather have causality for peace-of-mind (I like free will), but relativity has a good deal of proof...