All of the activities described are already illegal -- they just want more power to control the net.
The Internet is turning into the great equalizer and the traditional media and established political parties don't like it. Unfortunately for us, they still have the power and no qualms about using it. And, almost as if to prove that last point, they picked Janet Reno to chair the committee. This is scary.
heh. "any program you write" is a little bit inconsistent with "minor syntax changes" unless you write everything for the parallelizing compiler. I'm afraid that, if the programmer isn't designing the program explicitly for parallel execution, performance will suck. Add me to the skeptics list too, please.;)
Windows bombs out so much because they've spent all that time and money on six(*) separate operating systems instead of starting with a single good design and refining it.
(*)Note that this arbitrarily counts DOS and the original Windows as two operating systems... which is technically incorrect. (Of course, by using a strict definition of operating system one may disqualify DOS, Windows 1-3, and Win95/8 as well.;) It also counts as separate the time, money, and planning they spent on OS/2, of which NT was originally derived -- but much changed. And, the final obvious error I see in this analysis, Win2000 is derived, to a lesser or greater degree, from NT -- but it may be changed enough to qualify in spirit and implementation as a new OS.
I think this site is a good idea. Yeah, *it happens. The problem is that it happens to a lot of somewhat defenseless people, one or two at a time, all over the country. A central gathering of tales -- and remedys! -- from all the school systems is a good thing.
A website is an excellent source for this kind of information. It will help people deal with this kind of abuse without bothering anyone else. Hardly something to complain about, doncha think?
Also, check out the lsh project. I don't know where the home is but the link has the files. The lsh project intends to implement the ssh protocols in open source.
Right. No "objective person" would believe that they had won the Publisher's Clearinghouse jackpot after receiving bulk-rate junk mail with a lot of "if's" in it either, but PC got sued and changed some tactics. I don't know the outcome of the suit, but this one is different. They literally said exactly how many points it takes to win a Harrier. The point total, being a very large number, was intended to sound real.
This sounds like a simple case of Marketroid screw-up followed by Lawyerbot cover-up.
IIRC, the Raw Iron initiative involves a minimal Solaris kernel without the usual trappings of the OS. Administrators would scarcely know Solaris was there providing low level services to the Oracle software. Presumably, the installation disks for Raw Iron would include the minimal OS so you could literaly start with a "raw iron" computer and a CD and do a single install process.
After installation, the advantage would be to allow Oracle database analysts to do the complete administration of a dedicated database box without support from a sysadmin. Of course, it could be tuned specifically for good database performance without considering other services -- other than SQL*Net type things that support database connectivity.
There is a project called lsh with the goal of implementing the ssh protocols in open source. Is anyone familiar with this project or the current quality of the software? This sounds like something that should eventually be in every distribution!
A power outage during the actual Y2K rollover might cause all manners of problems that less well-timed power outages would not. This thread started out trivializing any likely Y2K power outages. My point was that, during that unique point in time, a power outage might wreak far more havoc than if the clocks weren't rolling over the big two.
The article I read blamed the four million gallon sewage spill in Van Nuys on a power outage during a Y2K test of the system. I am hoping massive sewage spills aren't normal consequences of routine power outages!;)
Remember the big sewage spill in California (Van Nuys?) a few weeks back? They were doing a Y2K test and experienced a power failure.
How many Y2K test plans included killing the power in the middle of the test? I would suspect that a lot of fringe problems might be uncovered if we actually do lose power during the rollover.
You have made a good point but you have overlooked a couple of things. Windows users will gradually grow more sophisticated over time. The strategy of pretending that administrative issues don't exist so that you need only be a "user" of your machine will grow weaker over time as Windows users gain experience. Windows only appears to be easy to use and administration free because of several factors including this naivete and, of course, pre-installation. As users become more knowlegable and as other systems are offered preinstalled that boot straight to GUI's Windows will lose this advantage.
...will not come to pass until it is conventional wisdom that Linux will inevitably win. For MS to release their own version of Linux would be perceived as their conceding the ultimate victory of Linux over Windows. They will not participate in the destruction of Windows -- until there is nothing left to save.
Make money fast! No selling required with a guaranteed part-time income of up to 20,000,000,000 monetary units per planetary rotation! Just order our kit for only 10,000,000,000 monetary units (grams of platinum, please drop them in the back yard -- NOT on the house or car!). The kit includes *everything* you need to start living the good life! Hear what others have said about MoneyScam...
[include quotes of MoneyScam rich customers here...]
If you wish to be removed from our list and not receive our mailings in the future, send 10,000,000 monetary units!
Yours in InstaWealth, A. Bilfred Spammer, President, MoneyScam Industries (Null3928@bigfoot.com)
Actually, the victim fatality rate, the long-term dormancy of the virus, and the apparent good health of HIV carriers makes AIDS, in the absence of careful avoidance practices and an ultimate cure, a nightmare of a people killer. I'd don't think I want to read about something much worse!
I'm not familiar with the book you mention but a faster acting plague would inspire a much more radical reaction in the uninfected portions of humanity to protect themselves, possibly resulting in less damage rather than more. I guess a worse virus would be HIV-like in its dormancy and fatality rate but much more contagious... Now, that is scary!
I'm not exactly a "beginning" Linux programmer -- I've been writing C code and scripts under Linux for 4 years now. However, this sounds like a book I need anyway. There are numerous topics I have not yet delved into where I would like a quick introduction instead of a dedicated (expensive) topic-specific reference. I think I'll buy it... thanks for the comment.
In the past few years I've heard a similar style in arguments against Unix in general from mainframe proponents in our big data center. It never gets to the point of objective comparisons and never includes a balanced view of trends. Those "arguments" seem to have died as Unix has continued to grow in our town -- where we now have about as many large-scale Unix machines as mainframes.
But now the new-fud mongers have a new hope: Win2K will crush Linux on the low end and the big Unix vendors at the high end. If this is all their advance fud spewers have to offer I'll just have to wait for the real battle, thank you. That is, if we don't all die of boredom waiting for Win2k to finally be released!;)
Coming on the heels of the Red Hat announcement, this can only help raise awareness of Linux in circles at the opposite extreme from Geekdom.
With several consecutive IPO's managers and investors will start to appreciate the momentum of Linux before they even get a chance to understand why it has such momentum. All of the subsequent attention also serves to detract from the what was recently thought of as the "juggernaut" of NT. Truly a good thing.
I don't think that your scenario would come to pass quite like you describe. However, I do think that a scaled-down version of your scenario could happen. Congress might be tempted to practice something we've done in social programs in the past: reduce their funding by the same amount they make. That way, we get all of the disadvantages but not all of the advantages.
Private space-related stocks would plummet and the companies would have trouble raising capital and getting business. Cost-effective solutions would still be ignored by NASA. And, tax dollars would still fund, on a partial basis, the whole fiasco.
Man walked on the moon in 1969, the year before the dawn of the Unix epoch. Must we discard the aging space travel technologies pioneered during and prior to those days and start anew?
The first block-structured language, ALGOL, is now about 40 years old. That software technology is still alive in the latest languages -- Java can trace its roots directly back to ALGOL.
Firearms are now about 500 years old -- and still rule the world in a very literal sense. Further, all the modern pistols I've seen are mere refinements and variations on a 90+ year old design.
It is not the arbitrary incident of when a technology is originally developed that determines its importance now and in the future. The solid stuff lasts and is refined and improved. Like it or not, the works of Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie were so fundamentally sound that new variations of Unix are just hitting their stride now, three decades later.
That kind of quality is something that fans of Bill Gates' young empire, now pushing its third OS family, can only dream about.
Re:..tshirts (Warning: drifting further offtopic!)
on
Myth II Linux Demo
·
· Score: 2
How about "/.'ed and alive (but, alas, not the server)" for those who were/.'ed off the net...
or "Linux-driven, proven/. resistant to 100 HPS" for those survivors with battle-tested operating systems (replace "Linux" with FreeBSD, etc, as needed).
or "Stress-tested by the/. effect" for that network administrator harried look (must muss hair and miss a night's sleep to wear this one).
or, for the wayward journalist, "Flame and/. resistent". Journalists will want to wear this for the photo that accompanies the column to intimidate the would-be flamer.;)
The proposed Internet tax is nothing special. Until telephone orders are taxed why should Internet transactions be taxed?
RantMode=1;
Of course, that kind of logic is irrelevant -- the real point is to increase taxes. The more kinds of taxes there are and the more sources and justifications those taxes have, the easier it is for people not to notice just how much they are being taxed. And, the easier it is for them to support taxes that they do not directly pay.
For example, taxing the manufacturing of automobiles only raises the cost of purchasing cars -- on which you will also pay sales tax. The net effect of taxing such production is to unfairly burden domestic goods while giving foreign goods from lands with lower production taxes an advantage.
The whole point of putting half of our social security taxes on the employer's side of the ledger is simply to make the citizens think they are paying less tax. The costs to the employer, however, are the same whether the whole amount is put in your column, the employer's column, or split as they are now. The cost to hire you is the same and the employer knows how much you cost. Just like the self-employed, the employee is paying this tax by his or her labor.
Now, if all taxes were accumulated in one big tax -- without even the fiction of claiming the employer is paying some -- we would finally know how much tax we pay and we might offer more resistance.
Internet-specific taxes are just another source of revenue. The taxing opportunity here is to divide and conquer the tax base by convincing the non-connected that we Internet users are not paying our fair share. Further, we are probably rich as well, considering recent high-profile Internet property acquisitions.
Hide some taxes, make others confusingly indirect, use the popular programs to justify additional program-specific taxes, and even call a few taxes "fees". And, most important of all, make each new tax apply to a minority of taxpayers so the remaining majority will support, even demand, it. That is the plan.
The proposed Internet tax is just a small piece in a much larger and very successful taxing scheme.
Slashdot Mirror
What about that one some investigative justices found lurking in the penumbra emanating from some other rights?
;)
Oh, I forgot... That right to privacy wouldn't apply here -- it was single purpose.
All of the activities described are already illegal -- they just want more power to control the net.
The Internet is turning into the great equalizer and the traditional media and established political parties don't like it. Unfortunately for us, they still have the power and no qualms about using it. And, almost as if to prove that last point, they picked Janet Reno to chair the committee. This is scary.
heh. "any program you write" is a little bit inconsistent with "minor syntax changes" unless you write everything for the parallelizing compiler. I'm afraid that, if the programmer isn't designing the program explicitly for parallel execution, performance will suck. Add me to the skeptics list too, please. ;)
Hmmm... I don't like the sound of that.
Windows bombs out so much because they've spent all that time and money on six(*) separate operating systems instead of starting with a single good design and refining it.
;) It also counts as separate the time, money, and planning they spent on OS/2, of which NT was originally derived -- but much changed. And, the final obvious error I see in this analysis, Win2000 is derived, to a lesser or greater degree, from NT -- but it may be changed enough to qualify in spirit and implementation as a new OS.
They are: (1)DOS, (2)Windows 1-3, (3)Windows 95-98, (4)OS/2, (5)Windows NT, (6)Win2000.
(*)Note that this arbitrarily counts DOS and the original Windows as two operating systems... which is technically incorrect. (Of course, by using a strict definition of operating system one may disqualify DOS, Windows 1-3, and Win95/8 as well.
I think this site is a good idea. Yeah, *it happens. The problem is that it happens to a lot of somewhat defenseless people, one or two at a time, all over the country. A central gathering of tales -- and remedys! -- from all the school systems is a good thing.
;)
A website is an excellent source for this kind of information. It will help people deal with this kind of abuse without bothering anyone else. Hardly something to complain about, doncha think?
Meanwhile, Jon Katz' legacy grows.
Also, check out the lsh project. I don't know where the home is but the link has the files. The lsh project intends to implement the ssh protocols in open source.
Right. No "objective person" would believe that they had won the Publisher's Clearinghouse jackpot after receiving bulk-rate junk mail with a lot of "if's" in it either, but PC got sued and changed some tactics. I don't know the outcome of the suit, but this one is different. They literally said exactly how many points it takes to win a Harrier. The point total, being a very large number, was intended to sound real.
This sounds like a simple case of Marketroid screw-up followed by Lawyerbot cover-up.
IIRC, the Raw Iron initiative involves a minimal Solaris kernel without the usual trappings of the OS. Administrators would scarcely know Solaris was there providing low level services to the Oracle software. Presumably, the installation disks for Raw Iron would include the minimal OS so you could literaly start with a "raw iron" computer and a CD and do a single install process.
After installation, the advantage would be to allow Oracle database analysts to do the complete administration of a dedicated database box without support from a sysadmin. Of course, it could be tuned specifically for good database performance without considering other services -- other than SQL*Net type things that support database connectivity.
There is a project called lsh with the goal of implementing the ssh protocols in open source. Is anyone familiar with this project or the current quality of the software? This sounds like something that should eventually be in every distribution!
A power outage during the actual Y2K rollover might cause all manners of problems that less well-timed power outages would not. This thread started out trivializing any likely Y2K power outages. My point was that, during that unique point in time, a power outage might wreak far more havoc than if the clocks weren't rolling over the big two.
;)
The article I read blamed the four million gallon sewage spill in Van Nuys on a power outage during a Y2K test of the system. I am hoping massive sewage spills aren't normal consequences of routine power outages!
Remember the big sewage spill in California (Van Nuys?) a few weeks back? They were doing a Y2K test and experienced a power failure.
How many Y2K test plans included killing the power in the middle of the test? I would suspect that a lot of fringe problems might be uncovered if we actually do lose power during the rollover.
I was planning my next machine to be on 2.2... It now looks like Linus, et al, may be finished with 2.4 before I even order any hardware.
Does anyone know if SuSE or Red Hat is planning another release based on 2.2?
You have made a good point but you have overlooked a couple of things. Windows users will gradually grow more sophisticated over time. The strategy of pretending that administrative issues don't exist so that you need only be a "user" of your machine will grow weaker over time as Windows users gain experience. Windows only appears to be easy to use and administration free because of several factors including this naivete and, of course, pre-installation. As users become more knowlegable and as other systems are offered preinstalled that boot straight to GUI's Windows will lose this advantage.
...will not come to pass until it is conventional wisdom that Linux will inevitably win. For MS to release their own version of Linux would be perceived as their conceding the ultimate victory of Linux over Windows. They will not participate in the destruction of Windows -- until there is nothing left to save.
Make money fast! No selling required with a guaranteed part-time income of up to 20,000,000,000 monetary units per planetary rotation! Just order our kit for only 10,000,000,000 monetary units (grams of platinum, please drop them in the back yard -- NOT on the house or car!). The kit includes *everything* you need to start living the good life! Hear what others have said about MoneyScam...
[include quotes of MoneyScam rich customers here...]
If you wish to be removed from our list and not receive our mailings in the future, send 10,000,000 monetary units!
Yours in InstaWealth,
A. Bilfred Spammer,
President, MoneyScam Industries
(Null3928@bigfoot.com)
Actually, the victim fatality rate, the long-term dormancy of the virus, and the apparent good health of HIV carriers makes AIDS, in the absence of careful avoidance practices and an ultimate cure, a nightmare of a people killer. I'd don't think I want to read about something much worse!
I'm not familiar with the book you mention but a faster acting plague would inspire a much more radical reaction in the uninfected portions of humanity to protect themselves, possibly resulting in less damage rather than more. I guess a worse virus would be HIV-like in its dormancy and fatality rate but much more contagious... Now, that is scary!
Running Netscape from my Solaris 7 Sun 10, that is what I get. It turns out to be an error. And I thought it was a congratulatory message! ;)
I'm not exactly a "beginning" Linux programmer -- I've been writing C code and scripts under Linux for 4 years now. However, this sounds like a book I need anyway. There are numerous topics I have not yet delved into where I would like a quick introduction instead of a dedicated (expensive) topic-specific reference. I think I'll buy it... thanks for the comment.
In the past few years I've heard a similar style in arguments against Unix in general from mainframe proponents in our big data center. It never gets to the point of objective comparisons and never includes a balanced view of trends. Those "arguments" seem to have died as Unix has continued to grow in our town -- where we now have about as many large-scale Unix machines as mainframes.
;)
But now the new-fud mongers have a new hope: Win2K will crush Linux on the low end and the big Unix vendors at the high end. If this is all their advance fud spewers have to offer I'll just have to wait for the real battle, thank you. That is, if we don't all die of boredom waiting for Win2k to finally be released!
Coming on the heels of the Red Hat announcement, this can only help raise awareness of Linux in circles at the opposite extreme from Geekdom.
With several consecutive IPO's managers and investors will start to appreciate the momentum of Linux before they even get a chance to understand why it has such momentum. All of the subsequent attention also serves to detract from the what was recently thought of as the "juggernaut" of NT. Truly a good thing.
I don't think that your scenario would come to pass quite like you describe. However, I do think that a scaled-down version of your scenario could happen. Congress might be tempted to practice something we've done in social programs in the past: reduce their funding by the same amount they make. That way, we get all of the disadvantages but not all of the advantages.
Private space-related stocks would plummet and the companies would have trouble raising capital and getting business. Cost-effective solutions would still be ignored by NASA. And, tax dollars would still fund, on a partial basis, the whole fiasco.
Man walked on the moon in 1969, the year before the dawn of the Unix epoch. Must we discard the aging space travel technologies pioneered during and prior to those days and start anew?
The first block-structured language, ALGOL, is now about 40 years old. That software technology is still alive in the latest languages -- Java can trace its roots directly back to ALGOL.
Firearms are now about 500 years old -- and still rule the world in a very literal sense. Further, all the modern pistols I've seen are mere refinements and variations on a 90+ year old design.
It is not the arbitrary incident of when a technology is originally developed that determines its importance now and in the future. The solid stuff lasts and is refined and improved. Like it or not, the works of Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie were so fundamentally sound that new variations of Unix are just hitting their stride now, three decades later.
That kind of quality is something that fans of Bill Gates' young empire, now pushing its third OS family, can only dream about.
How about "/.'ed and alive (but, alas, not the server)" for those who were /.'ed off the net...
/. resistant to 100 HPS" for those survivors with battle-tested operating systems (replace "Linux" with FreeBSD, etc, as needed).
/. effect" for that network administrator harried look (must muss hair and miss a night's sleep to wear this one).
/. resistent". Journalists will want to wear this for the photo that accompanies the column to intimidate the would-be flamer. ;)
or "Linux-driven, proven
or "Stress-tested by the
or, for the wayward journalist, "Flame and
The proposed Internet tax is nothing special. Until telephone orders are taxed why should Internet transactions be taxed?
RantMode=1;
Of course, that kind of logic is irrelevant -- the real point is to increase taxes. The more kinds of taxes there are and the more sources and justifications those taxes have, the easier it is for people not to notice just how much they are being taxed. And, the easier it is for them to support taxes that they do not directly pay.
For example, taxing the manufacturing of automobiles only raises the cost of purchasing cars -- on which you will also pay sales tax. The net effect of taxing such production is to unfairly burden domestic goods while giving foreign goods from lands with lower production taxes an advantage.
The whole point of putting half of our social security taxes on the employer's side of the ledger is simply to make the citizens think they are paying less tax. The costs to the employer, however, are the same whether the whole amount is put in your column, the employer's column, or split as they are now. The cost to hire you is the same and the employer knows how much you cost. Just like the self-employed, the employee is paying this tax by his or her labor.
Now, if all taxes were accumulated in one big tax -- without even the fiction of claiming the employer is paying some -- we would finally know how much tax we pay and we might offer more resistance.
Internet-specific taxes are just another source of revenue. The taxing opportunity here is to divide and conquer the tax base by convincing the non-connected that we Internet users are not paying our fair share. Further, we are probably rich as well, considering recent high-profile Internet property acquisitions.
Hide some taxes, make others confusingly indirect, use the popular programs to justify additional program-specific taxes, and even call a few taxes "fees". And, most important of all, make each new tax apply to a minority of taxpayers so the remaining majority will support, even demand, it. That is the plan.
The proposed Internet tax is just a small piece in a much larger and very successful taxing scheme.
RantMode=0;