...how many of them are ad/pr0n/phishing-laden cybersquats, how many are "my first webpage" single-page sites, how many contain the default IIS or Apache test pages, how many are toss-off political candidate or jumped-the-shark-by-now specialty (e.g. Kerry 2004 campaign) websites, etc? In short, how many of them are actual, funct^M usable, ongoing websites? That's what I want to know.
If a private company can get up there and make the Sun actually turn a profit --by converting solar energy into microwave energy, which in turn becomes electricity once it gets down here-- Space would be hella profitable. (if oil/gas/etc extraction costs go too much higher from it's all-time records, that wouldn't be too hard to justify).
Sure, the initial outlay would be ungodly expensive, but the profits from feeding the grid with 24/7 solar power on a massive scale, plus the "we got all the room you need up here" factor will be plenty enough to keep it going once it gets started.
...and I haven't even come near touching the ungodly huge profit and material to be had from mining NEO asteroids (and other nearby orbital objects) to sustain and grow that nascent colonist economy.
Sounds like really big picture stuff, but then, so was the US Transcontinental Railroad back in the 19th century (or the Australian version, or the Canadian version, or things like the Louisiana Purchase, sailing to North America in the first place, etc etc etc).
No, seriously: Livna works just fine for me (And I think DAG should cover it as well; can;t remember the URL offhand, though). Both Livna and DAG have yum repos that will grant all the necessary tidbits needed to complete the install (including NTFS support for weirdoes like me who have to plug in HDD's formatted in that recover others' data on occasion...).
Sure - it's called DAZ|Studio; a 3d hobbyist's compositing and basic rendering tool. The base is free (as in beer), and the plugins are pretty cheap (quite a few of those are free as well).
Lots and lots of manual translation for the ugly parts - IIRC, the main File I/O portions were almost totally unrecognizeable between the two. I mostly worked on docs, SDK tuning and plugins, so most of what I did was drop-easy in translation. It also helped that we used Qt to handle nearly all the gruntwork in the UI, so almost everything in that portion was pretty translateable, with little to no need to porting effort.
BTW - you can use straight-up C/C++ w/ only a little setup in both IDE's (yes, Xcode too) - makes things a whole lot easier.:)
As a guy who once worked in a VS.NET/X-Tools shop (the app had both a Win32 and a Mac version), it's kind of cool to see someone using both IDE's on one box w/o having to reboot to switch between 'em.
The fact that it works on Parallels fairly nicely means that you no longer need to buy two machines for the Mac guys (just make sure there's enough RAM in there), and that you can do porting in either direction w/o all the wasted time in transferring files...
I think the big stink was w/ folks working the whole rootkit-detection angle (which would require something a bit tighter to the kernel), and not the ordinary everyday virus/worm propagation (which could more easily be caught with something looking for memory footprint signatures or what-have-you).
But then again, F-Secure is big on rootkit detection, and you didn't hear any crying out of them ab't the whole Vista thing. *shrug*
Of course, Symantec and McAfee are likely singing MSFT's praises to high heaven once again... (and their business model is saved)
OTOH, given the closeness of the supposed release date, it tells me that the requisite holes were likely already there to begin with (and that they can likely be exploited, even if MSFT sat tight and never gave the A/V folks the info anyway). That, or they're burning midnight oil to open up said holes (which would mean that oh damn, here it comes...!)
Man - either way, this doesn't exactly insipre confidence that MSFt, Vista, or it's devs were actually serious about security (save through obscurity) in the first place...
Actually, it's not as bad as it first appears. When I first eyeballed it (and was looking at alternatives that weren't so OSS), I realized even then that it was worth the time I spent learning it - the tech support call savings alone would be well beyond valuable, let alone the price tag (free!):) ).
The docs onsite are pretty valuable, and they walk you through setup nicely. Installation isn't too bad; even a default MySQL or PostgreSQL installation on the box can be prepped and ready to go with the provided scripts, or you can just use the built-in DB.
My only real gripes so far are that:
I had to learn more about postgres (my fault). Even though Bacula comes with an internal DB engine if you choose it, I figured that I already somewhat knew how to support pgsql, so I chose the devil I knew as opposed to the one I didn't.
Needs a few more pre-built tools for certain jobs. I have scripts (based heavily on mt and mtx) that do quite a few jobs, but I'd lvoe to see a binary that can automatically make bootstrap CD's, and perhaps a standalone brestore-based set of tools - that would be nice.
I have a couple 'doze servers buried in a huge Linux-centric environment. It's not tough to setup or run on any of them really (on Linux and FBSD it's a frickin' breeze, client-side), but I can see most MCSE's scratching their heads going "WTF!?" a lot if they tried it. Prolly has to do w/ the *nix-like roots of the thing.
OTOH, if my company had went out and bought Legato, Bakbone, or one of the big boys, it would've required learning it fairly well and paying a ginormous pricetag. Also, if things ever go too far south, I know Bacula well enough now that I can handle it, pretty much no matter what "it" is.
The best part is, it runs just fine on a Dell PV-124T (16-tape LTO-2), a Dell PV-132 (~28-tape LTO-3), as well as some ungodly old DLT IV kit I have stashed off to one side but can't seem to quite get rid of (yet).
"How exactly is a $100 PC going to improve the lives of third-worlder?"
While I agree that there are lots of things that $100US can be spent on, consider:
a laptop donated (as opposed to individually bought, as I assume you're assuming) can hold numerous school textbooks. That alone increases its value immeasurably (and precludes most of the need for pencils, paper, etc) Saves money on having to buy multiple textbooks at the same time.
said laptop can also contain basic curricula that a nearby (and literate) teacher/village elder/whoever can use to teach in areas where schools don't even exist. A literate person wanting more than the education he/she already has can use what's there to self-improve.
it can contain/pass along news and events (if close enough to be at least somewhat networked) much, much faster than a half-rusted Land Rover over rainy-season roads could
it can contain helpful information about farming methods, basic engineering tips, and other things that can be pretty useful to a village looking to repair a busted water pump or what-have-you
Sure - if it breaks, repairs are going to be a screaming pain in the arse out in BFE (pardon the semi-pun). OTOH, at $100/pop, any aid agency can reasonably replace/exchange a not-negligible number of those that do break down, and keep the busted ones for spare parts.
OTOH, Most OLPC units will likely be going to developing nations, which means that as far as US and EU jurisdiction is concerned, MSFT may still have to behave itself (well, relatively so).
They may also be cozy in the knowledge that in the money end of the market (or, the parts of the market where the majority of money can be made), they'll likely remain and retain dominance for awhile longer.
Long-term? Once/If said developing nations get along far enough to count as industrialized, then MSFT will have a problem. However, yet another problem comes up - companies which do business with developing nations... what do they standardize on (for the sake of interoperability)?
Nice can o' worms for anyone planning dominance on a global scale these days, innit?:)
"Coming from anyone else, I can cope with the picture that brings up in my mind. But from Ballmer?"
That's because there was no mention any dog food in those pictures or videos. Now squirt pictures of his kids eating Alpo or a video of recent family vacations to the Purina processing plant in Des Moines, Iowa, and now you've got media that Ballmer would be overjoyed to see!
I grok what you're getting at as per the two retailers and the weight they carry, but I gotta be picky on something: WalMart and Target often (if not mostly) compete directly against each other, and against others, in any given city or town. By definition the term "monopoly" in any form would have a very hard time applying to either of them (esp. when you throw in other DVD-selling entities like KMart, ShopKo, BestBuy, and Circuit City, as well as regional big-box retailers like Venture (I think they're still around in the midwest US), et al).
I do think that this ultimately benefits the consumer, because the downward pressure on prices may indeed ripple outwards. After all, if the two biggies get a cut, KMart and Best Buy aren't going to sit idly by and just take it - they'll want a piece of the discounts too. This may (hopefully) put in place something that has been sorely lacking in this industry (and others like it)... actual competition for the consumer dollar. After all, WalMart and Target aren't demanding lower pricing because they're wanting to keep the movies for themselves, but because they want to better attract the consumer dollar for the movies that they want to retail in turn.
Ford Explorer (which faced a TON of lawsuits before and after the recall)
Vioxx
a whole host of other drugs...
I distinctly remember recent lawyer commercials trumpeting recalls as admissions of responsibility (anyone heard of James Sokolove? yeah, me too - now that his name is splayed across my TV screen quite often).
Now take Joe Schmoe who shows up at the hospital with burns on his legs... and happens to own a laptop... (whether the burns were actually caused by the batteries or not)...
"Why is it taking everyone else so long to innitiate a recall?"
Because recalls are ugly, expensive, lawsuit-exposing, and gives mostly bad PR to whoever has to initiate one. You get some small props for being responsible, but it sort of falls short in the big fat benefits vs. risks calculator.
Slashdot Mirror
Props and salutations from a normally conservative-leaning sysadmin living out in Sugarhouse.
If a private company can get up there and make the Sun actually turn a profit --by converting solar energy into microwave energy, which in turn becomes electricity once it gets down here-- Space would be hella profitable. (if oil/gas/etc extraction costs go too much higher from it's all-time records, that wouldn't be too hard to justify).
Sure, the initial outlay would be ungodly expensive, but the profits from feeding the grid with 24/7 solar power on a massive scale, plus the "we got all the room you need up here" factor will be plenty enough to keep it going once it gets started.
Sounds like really big picture stuff, but then, so was the US Transcontinental Railroad back in the 19th century (or the Australian version, or the Canadian version, or things like the Louisiana Purchase, sailing to North America in the first place, etc etc etc).
Dag
Cheers! /P
HTH,
BTW - you can use straight-up C/C++ w/ only a little setup in both IDE's (yes, Xcode too) - makes things a whole lot easier. :)
The fact that it works on Parallels fairly nicely means that you no longer need to buy two machines for the Mac guys (just make sure there's enough RAM in there), and that you can do porting in either direction w/o all the wasted time in transferring files...
But then again, F-Secure is big on rootkit detection, and you didn't hear any crying out of them ab't the whole Vista thing. *shrug*
OTOH, given the closeness of the supposed release date, it tells me that the requisite holes were likely already there to begin with (and that they can likely be exploited, even if MSFT sat tight and never gave the A/V folks the info anyway). That, or they're burning midnight oil to open up said holes (which would mean that oh damn, here it comes...!)
Man - either way, this doesn't exactly insipre confidence that MSFt, Vista, or it's devs were actually serious about security (save through obscurity) in the first place...
The docs onsite are pretty valuable, and they walk you through setup nicely. Installation isn't too bad; even a default MySQL or PostgreSQL installation on the box can be prepped and ready to go with the provided scripts, or you can just use the built-in DB.
My only real gripes so far are that:
OTOH, if my company had went out and bought Legato, Bakbone, or one of the big boys, it would've required learning it fairly well and paying a ginormous pricetag. Also, if things ever go too far south, I know Bacula well enough now that I can handle it, pretty much no matter what "it" is.
The best part is, it runs just fine on a Dell PV-124T (16-tape LTO-2), a Dell PV-132 (~28-tape LTO-3), as well as some ungodly old DLT IV kit I have stashed off to one side but can't seem to quite get rid of (yet).
YMMV as usual, though :)
Works fine with my autoloaders, and it's open source.
While I agree that there are lots of things that $100US can be spent on, consider:
Sure - if it breaks, repairs are going to be a screaming pain in the arse out in BFE (pardon the semi-pun). OTOH, at $100/pop, any aid agency can reasonably replace/exchange a not-negligible number of those that do break down, and keep the busted ones for spare parts.
OTOH, Most OLPC units will likely be going to developing nations, which means that as far as US and EU jurisdiction is concerned, MSFT may still have to behave itself (well, relatively so).
They may also be cozy in the knowledge that in the money end of the market (or, the parts of the market where the majority of money can be made), they'll likely remain and retain dominance for awhile longer.
Long-term? Once/If said developing nations get along far enough to count as industrialized, then MSFT will have a problem. However, yet another problem comes up - companies which do business with developing nations... what do they standardize on (for the sake of interoperability)?
Nice can o' worms for anyone planning dominance on a global scale these days, innit? :)
Good Lord! The chairs are a'gonna fly in Redmond once this gets out!
(props for the security testing, though :) )
That's because there was no mention any dog food in those pictures or videos. Now squirt pictures of his kids eating Alpo or a video of recent family vacations to the Purina processing plant in Des Moines, Iowa, and now you've got media that Ballmer would be overjoyed to see!
I grok what you're getting at as per the two retailers and the weight they carry, but I gotta be picky on something: WalMart and Target often (if not mostly) compete directly against each other, and against others, in any given city or town. By definition the term "monopoly" in any form would have a very hard time applying to either of them (esp. when you throw in other DVD-selling entities like KMart, ShopKo, BestBuy, and Circuit City, as well as regional big-box retailers like Venture (I think they're still around in the midwest US), et al).
I do think that this ultimately benefits the consumer, because the downward pressure on prices may indeed ripple outwards. After all, if the two biggies get a cut, KMart and Best Buy aren't going to sit idly by and just take it - they'll want a piece of the discounts too. This may (hopefully) put in place something that has been sorely lacking in this industry (and others like it)... actual competition for the consumer dollar. After all, WalMart and Target aren't demanding lower pricing because they're wanting to keep the movies for themselves, but because they want to better attract the consumer dollar for the movies that they want to retail in turn.
Man, I don't know whether I actually want to believe what I'm seeing or not...
Now if only they could put the same pressure on the RIAA...
Ford Explorer (which faced a TON of lawsuits before and after the recall)
Vioxx
a whole host of other drugs...
I distinctly remember recent lawyer commercials trumpeting recalls as admissions of responsibility (anyone heard of James Sokolove? yeah, me too - now that his name is splayed across my TV screen quite often).
Now take Joe Schmoe who shows up at the hospital with burns on his legs... and happens to own a laptop... (whether the burns were actually caused by the batteries or not)...
Because recalls are ugly, expensive, lawsuit-exposing, and gives mostly bad PR to whoever has to initiate one. You get some small props for being responsible, but it sort of falls short in the big fat benefits vs. risks calculator.
I honestly don't see an easy way for spammers to cull this thing (unless they bust into the PrefPass servers, I suppose).