To quote their page, "FCS is envisioned as a networked 'system of systems" that will include robotic reconnaissance vehicles and sensors; tactical mobile robots; mobile command, control and communications platforms; networked fires from futuristic ground and air platforms; and advanced three-dimensional targeting systems operating on land and in the air.'
Oh, great. They're building SkyNet.
All robots. All automated. All computer controlled. And they're using Linux. Who'd have thought lil' Tux would eventually bring about the end of civilization? Linux's reliability means that SkyNet will become self-aware and overthrow the humans many years sooner than it would otherwise have done. At least if they ran Windoze we could rest assured that it would eventually collapse due to bluescreens or worms/viruses. But it's running Linux and will therefore be undefeatable. I fear the end is near...
Let the flames begin ... and ignore them.
on
XFree86 4.3.0 Released
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I am a happy X user.
Since this is a story about X, all of the pre-programmed Slashbots are going to trot out and declare that X is broken, old, badly designed, missing features, whatever.
Meanwhile, the XFree86 team continues, release after release, to pound out great code that addresses all of the shortcomings people tend to cite. Faster direct rendering? Check. Anti-aliased text? Check. Multi-head? Check. Video extensions? Check. 3-D? Check.
Do you see a pattern here? X is versatile. X is extensible. X is the industry standard -- all Unix GUI programs use it.
And as always, X's killer feature is its network transparency. No "desktop-within-a-desktop" nonsense like you have to do on other platforms. Today I had the windows of programs from no less than three different computers running on my desktop. Transparently. Lots of X users do this every day, usually without even thinking about it.
Perhaps someday the tired old "X is obsolete and must be replaced" will finally cease. But today is probably not that day. Let the flames begin. I will ignore them and continue to praise the XFree86 developers for another job well done.
Throw away your video card? Throw away your other slotted peripherals? Replace them with something that uses an Intel-proprietary bus?
Didn't IBM try this a decade and a half ago? Intel needs to read up on something called Micro Channel and learn why it didn't work for IBM, and it won't work for them either.
Intel needs to tread carefully. They may be Chipzilla today, but something like this could be the turning point, like Micro Channel was for IBM, where they turned the screws a little too tight and the customers fled to something more open.
"I'm not an economist, but I think sometime in the next five years you'll see that turn around," he said. "And I think the advances we're making this year and next year will be part of the reason that will turn around... the extra productivity and efficiency that Web services and the new form factors, simpler forms of communication will bring will help drive that productivity."
I can't believe it. Ok, well, actually I can. How much sheer arrogance does it take for Gates to claim that the economy will recover when, and only when, Microsoft "innovations" make it possible?
This is the kind of thing that makes me want to just reach through the screen and choke the living sh*t out of Gates. He's a megalomaniac evil businessman posing as a lovable geek. And people buy it.
Wasn't it just a few days ago that someone on "Ask Slashdot" was looking for a value-priced notebook whose purchase price did not include the Microsoft tax?
This really is a breakthrough, despite it being LindowsOS. This is, perhaps, the first time you can buy a truly Linux-preloaded notebook, as opposed to some of those other "boutique" shops where a Linux machine costs 50-100% more than the same machine loaded with Windows from a first-tier vendor (usually because they simply bought the machine from one of those first-tier vendors and then threw away the Windows license).
But as usual, Slashdotters will find something to complain about. I'm not complaining. As enamoured as I am with my ThinkPad (which I bought used), if I were in the market for a notebook computer right now, I'd give this one some serious consideration.
This is the first time in history that a notebook vendor isn't charging you more for a computer with an operating system that costs less. Even if the very first thing you do is erase LindowsOS and install RedHat, this is still a significant milestone.
It is kind of curious that Microsoft would choose Connectix's product for its virtualization. For those not familiar with it -- Connectix Virtual PC is a little more elaborate than VMware because it actually emulates the i386 CPU in software. This is why it works, for example, on a Macintosh, while VMware doesn't.
Now, it should be patently obvious that Microsoft doesn't want you running Linux-on-Windows, Windows-on-Linux, Windows-on-Mac, or anything other than Windows-on-Windows. So you have to wonder what they're up to, here.
When you don't have cross-OS stuff to worry about, why emulate the hardware? For that matter, why emulate a computer at all? For Linux-on-Linux applications, you probably won't choose VMware when you can instead run User Mode Linux -- it uses the hardware more efficiently, you can share filesystems between the host and virtuals using NFS, and it runs the host OS's native binaries. I would think Microsoft would prefer to go this route.
Or perhaps Microsoft has finally decided that Itanium is an ongoing disaster and they need an Intel exit strategy? Hmmm...
Once again, the editors of Slashdot want you to think that the BBS is a product of days gone by. I'm here to remind everyone that those days never ended.
I've been running UNCENSORED! BBS since 1988 and it's still a hip, hot, totally-whats-happening hobby. The community is still there. The fun is still there. The comraderie is still there.
The only thing that isn't still there is the modem.
Slashdot likes to position itself as "what came after the BBS" but with the amount of volume a zillion users generate, you just can't replace the "folksy" feel of your favorite BBS. Get out there and BBS, folks!
Why use a desktop computer at all? I'm more impressed by services like Vonage. They give you a little POTS-to-Ethernet gizmo that you plug in anywhere behind your firewall, and you just connect any phone to it. Pick up the receiver and you hear a dial tone. Dial a number and it goes out over the Internet. You never have to bother with the computer. The computer doesn't even have to be turned on. Let's face it, if you're a geek, or even a lesser gadget freak, you've already got multiple computers sitting behind a firewall or mini-router on a broadband connection. So you just plug this thing in and go.
QuickNet's service appears to be cheaper. I was going to sign up for it, but I don't like the idea of having to have a program running on a desktop to keep the dial tone available. That's the problem with most Windows-based programs that do things like this, and it's no better when someone does it on Linux. (Ok, it's a little better, but this type of thing belongs either in a daemon or in dedicated hardware.)
Blocking port 25 is not the answer. It creates more problems than it solves. I am a senior sysadmin at a mid size hosting center, and we run mail services for a lot of our customers. The single biggest problem with mail is dealing with ISP's that block port 25.
Saying "oh, just run it on a different port" is not as simple as it sounds to us geeks. Sure, we offer SMTP on another port to get around those ISP's, but your typical nontechnical user doesn't even understand the problem, much less know how to apply the workaround. And during the time they can't send mail, they're blaming you. They're blaming your "broken" mail service, because the mailbox their ISP provided them with is working just fine.
So you set up the nonstandard port and tell them "point it here." Now you're wasting untold amounts of tech support time on the phone with the nontechnical users -- you have to figure out what operating system and e-mail client they're using, and hopefully it's a setup that someone in your tech support organization is familiar with. Then you have to walk them through the process of setting up SMTP on a nonstandard port, and setting up authentication if necessary. During that time, you've spent enough tech support time to make that account unprofitable this month, and the spammers have found some other way to deliver their mail anyway.
Blocking egress on port 25 is not a good solution.
I think there might be a grain of truth in the fact that KDE has very hard time winning the desktop. Gnome has the huge advantage of licensing (LGPL vs. GPL). It doesn't matter how much smoother or better the technology underlying KDE or KDE applications is.
This cannot be understated. I've been a KDE fan for many years, but I've noticed that most ISV's choose GTK for their applications. To wit: Codeweavers (the config screens for Crossover), VMware, Netscape (the Unix version of Mozilla uses GTK), etc. TheKompany is the exception to the rule. And even then, TheKompany doesn't use KDE anymore, they just use Qt so that their apps can run on all three of the major platforms.
Combine this with the fact that as of late, both GNOME and KDE are very intuitive and usable... Shawn may be right. When Red Hat 8 came out I tried the BlueCurve desktop and I really liked it. I started in KDE mode, but over the last couple of weeks I've been running it in GNOME mode and I really didn't notice a difference. That says something important.
Last summer I was building a two foot high poured-concrete wall... extending one, actually, at the edge of my patio, where a big oak tree had been taken down. Well, I poured the concrete in and it turned out that I hadn't bought enough.
So I went down into the basement and pulled out all the old computer crap I could find -- old hard disk drives, AOL CD's, ISA boards of various types, etc. and just threw them into the cement mix until the level rose to where I wanted the wall to be.
Perhaps someday after I die (or move) someone will dismantle that wall. When they do, they'll unearth some hard disk drives, complete with a 1997 or 1998 vintage of Red Hat Linux and other software of the time.
You don't have the right to trespass on someone else's network. Ever. You can contact them and discuss the problem; if that does not produce satisfactory results, you contact their ISP (and so on, up the chain, until you eventually talk to a Tier-1 ISP).
There is always a way to take care of the situation. Nobody wants to have their Internet service cancelled by an upstream provider because they violated their TOS by ignoring reports of a DoS attack originating on their network.
And your immediate reaction shouldn't be to launch an attack back at them. It should be to block the offending network at your own firewall. Come on people, this is Network Administration 101. I can't believe it's even being discussed.
Seriously folks, let's not do too much AOL bashing here. AOL is one of the giants of the tech industry -- one of the few big enough to hold its own against Microsoft. That's saying a lot. Their 35 million subscriber base dwarfs MSN's.
What would the Internet look like if those 35 million were MSN subscribers? Do you honestly expect the Internet would be nearly as open as it is today? We might have that closed-loop that Gates envisioned in the original version of The Road Ahead.
Although I'm not an AOL subscriber myself, I for one am glad it's there, and I hope they continue to retain their sizable lead in the ISP market. We need that balance.
And let's not forget that AOL funds the bulk of Mozilla development. I show my thankfulness for that by using the branded Netscape browser and patronizing the branded Netscape portal. You should, too.
"Built-in commercials" worked in the days of old because there was no such thing as syndication. A program aired once (usually live) and that was it. So you had sponsors paying for that airtime, and they got their advertising in.
Not so today.
When a program is recorded, space is left for the commercials. They usually don't even know who the sponsors are yet. Then the commercials are added later. A season or two later, if it's a popular program, it's all picked up for syndication (a wild process involving conventions and stations and networks and lots of wheeling-and-dealing). The station or network airing the program in syndication will be putting in a completely different set of commercials.
See the problem here? If the commercials are irrevocably embedded into the program, they can't be removed and replaced during syndication. That means it won't syndicate at all, because the cable networks and superstations of the world won't be able to put in their own commercials. They won't be able to make back the money they paid for the programming. So, they'll either choose other programming, or if this style of programming becomes dominant, the smaller stations and networks may go away entirely.
It's kind of like forcing people to take a web browser or media player with an operating system, whether they want it or not. It puts people's eyeballs where you want them in the short term, but it screws up the flexibility for pretty much everyone else in the universe.
This has already been done. I'm surprised that more Slashdotters don't know about www.old-computers.com. Those folks have a big and impressive database full of photos and stats.
There are a couple of things you might want to do in order to clean up your TCP/IP traffic, if you happen to be the person who controls your organization's Linux-based firewall.
First of all, absolutely, positively install Squid. The benefits of using a proxy cache for your outbound HTTP traffic are too clear to not do it. More importantly, however, since all your HTTP is now being application-level proxied, the TCP packets must always, always, always be correct.
Force everyone to use it. Sure, you could block port 80 on your IPmasq, but it's a better idea to transparently redirect all outbound port 80 traffic to Squid. There's a very good mini-HOWTO document on how to do this.
If you want to be a real bastard (like me), tell Squid to rewrite the User-agent: HTTP headers, to make every web browser within your organization report as some web browser other than IE. This has the bonus effect of "reducing" IE's market share because all those web sites think your users are running Netscape on Linux (or whatever).
Ok, that last step is kind of extreme, and I in fact had to remove it because it broke Windows Update (which I consider a feature, not a bug, but whatever...). Of course, why do you have Windows and IE users in your organization anyway? Simply beat them with a cluestick untill they switch to Linux and Netscape. Don't let someone who claims to be a master of reality tell you otherwise -- Linux is ready for the desktop.
By the way, you should be routing all your SMTP through a Sendmail (or postfix or whatever) relay, especially if you run Exchange. This keeps your incoming mail queued up when Exchange crashes. It also prevents Exchange from talking to other Exchange servers -- or to script kiddies.
Don't think Gimp. Think OpenOffice. Think Mozilla. Think apps that people actually want on the Mac. I've believed for a long time that Apple should be pushing really hard to make these two applications not only available, but downright pervasive on the Mac. This will eliminate Apple's indentured servitude to Microsoft and allow them to push forward in any direction they like without Microsoft threatening to pull the plug on Office (and to a lesser extent, IE) every time Apple tiptoes in a direction that offends Bill's delicate sensibilities.
Native GTK for Mac OS is a good way to kickstart apps like Moz and OO on the platform without requiring XFree86 to be installed first (which works wonderfully, but is a bit too hackish for nontechnical Mac users). Then Apple and others can begin working on making the integration more and more native-looking.
In a well-publicized memo either earlier this year or sometime during last, (I can't remember exactly which, I admit), executives at Microsoft admitted they considered Linux and open source software to be the biggest threat to their dominance and continued expansion into a variety of markets, from the home desktop and business office to the emerging TabletPC and notebook market.
After watching Microsoft closely for the last eighteen months or so, I've got to disagree. Microsoft's biggest threat isn't Linux, OpenOffice, or any piece of software at all--its themselves. Over the last eighteen months two distinctly different Microsoft cultures have emerged, often in opposition to each other.
Microsoft has, in fact, released some excellent products over the last eighteen months, as well as made some important and noteworthy advancements. Windows XP has proven itself as an extremely capable "bridge" product between the stability / power of Windows 2000 and the compatibility of the Win9x-era world of software. While there may not be many compelling reasons for Windows 2000 users to upgrade to Windows XP, there's no reason for Windows XP users to downgrade to 2K. Compared to Microsoft's Windows ME release, where many unfortunates stuck with the OS fixed their problems by installing the OLDER Windows 98SE, Windows XP has been quite a success. We've seen other solid products and developments in the X-Box, prototype TabletPC's, and the just-released DirectX 9. Overall, while Microsoft remains decidedly lackluster in areas like security, I have to say they've improved the overall quality of their product dramatically and deserve recognition for having done so.
The Dr. Jekyll of the Redmond campus may well be the collective body of programmers and designers--the true technicians--working on the software giants vast body of programs, operating systems, and other projects. If these were the people running the company, I daresay Microsoft would be perceived very differently by the collective IT community, but this is not the case.
The other aspect of Microsoft, and unfortunately, the dominant one, seems to be reserved for a type of marketing peon whose former job involved financial extortion, pathological lying, or a brief stint as one of Lucifer's demons. The sheer number of mis-steps made by this branch of Microsoft are difficult to remember, but some of the highlights include:
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The increasing levels of spyware and "digital rights management" integrated into Windows, including revelations that Windows Media Player tracks (and reports) what you view, the OS requires "authentication", and the Office suite is known for randomly (and incorrectly) claiming that the computer's hardware configuration has been changed--and requiring reactivation before it will function.
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The integration of a new type of licensing program designed to lock businesses into a permanent upgrade cycle, force them to pay for products they don't necessarily need, and, in general, suck a great deal more money into Microsoft's already overflowing coffers.
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The further claim by the Redmond company that the heavy resistance they encountered from the business market over implementing the above scheme was caused by customer's who "didn't understand" the benefit of such a program. Personally, I'd say they understood just fine--and what they understood was that your product is going to cost them a great deal more money, while providing a very questionable amount of additional value.
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The recently-revealed fact that Microsoft, in effect, offered states a bribe in order to drop their anti-trust suits against the Redmond giant. While I hold the states equally responsible for accepting the money in the first place, Redmond is known for displaying a remarkable level of NIH syndrome (Not Invented Here) perhaps only equaled by Steve Job's unparalleled Reality Distortion Field.
* A wonderful offering by Microsoft to donate thousands of ancient PC's running Windows 3.1 or even (gasp) Windows 95 to schools all across America in a move that would not only seed America's education system with a plethora of outdated, useless equipment but (coincidentally) take shots at Apple's market share. Really, the Apple angle is incidental, but the level of equipment MS's supposedly generous offering would extend is beyond contempt. You're telling me a company with forty billion dollars in cash reserves cannot afford to at least extend new PC's?
There were others--it's already emerged that MS developed a mobile phone under cooperation with a British company, with the firm expectation that the two would go to market together, only to dump them altogether, AFTER extracting the company's proprietary information. Then, of course, there's the company's attack on an Australian charity for daring to give away ancient Windows PC's that MIGHT be improperly registered. We're not even talking XP, or even 2K hardware here--we're talking Windows 95.
Add it all up and what you have is a company that, at the least, displays a profound level of arrogance coupled with the unshakable belief that they have not only the ability, but the right to dictate to the rest of the world, from charities to corporations, how the world should look. The only place we see Microsoft backing away from this type of overlord status is when it comes to organizations such as the RIAA or MPAA--and there, rather than standing strong as a champion of consumer's rights (its customers) the company has chosen to slavishly ally itself with them, incorporating ever-larger restrictions into its operating systems on how users can and can't use their equipment--and how they'll be monitored for doing so.
In response to these draconian measures we see government after government launching studies into the feasibilities of switching to open source software, school corporations investigating it, and end-users embracing it. Microsoft's response to this movement, thus far, has been characteristic of the brutal arrogance that the company typically displays. When some of the wealthiest counties in Washingston State began investigating switching to open source software, it was EXACTLY those counties that Microsoft targeted for a supposedly "random" audit, required that audit to take place within the middle of the school year, and informed school officials they had only six weeks to carry it out. Coincidence?
Now we see Microsoft launching seminars on open source software (you can safely guess its not promoted) and inundating senators, foreign governments, and anyone who will listen with all the reasons why OSS should absolutely NOT be considered as a possible solution. The first irony present in the entire situation is that this does them little good in the long run. Dragging people into rooms and inundating them with FUD may convince a few, but in the end, you'll lose a lot more than you'll convert.
Secondly ironic is Microsoft's own desire to seemingly destroy themselves at the precise moment their software is gaining some concrete technical merit. At the time when their operating system is actually becoming a product someone might want to run (as opposed to having no other choice), we see them burying it under a wave of spyware and fair-use-infringing "options" that seem purposefully designed to piss off their buyer constituency.
Ultimately, Linux is only Microsoft's biggest enemy because it represents a possible, cheaper alternative that can run on native x86 hardware without requiring an entire platform shift to Macintosh. Its not Linux Microsoft can't stand--its competition.
Its time for Redmond to wake up and smell the coffee. The businesses and governments testing Linux today are going to be the forefront of its adopters tomorrow, especially if your licensing restrictions and wallet-gutting pricing don't ease. Find a way to respond to the privacy, licensing cost, and fair-use regulation concerns of your buyers, or be prepared to be shoved out of the market. Before you arrogantly claim it couldn't possibly happen to you, take a good look at companies like Apple, IBM, or 3dfx who's names were once SYNONYMOUS with computing--and who now, without exception, are either dead or relegated to niche markets in the areas they once utterly dominated.
I'm no Linux user. I've never booted a distro of the OS in any of its flavors, and save for playing with it on a friend's machine, I've never spent much time in it. I am not an open source maverick, nor am I anti-business or anti-profit. What I am, however, is concerned about how Redmond intends to safeguard my privacy, my right to use an operating system as I see fit, and my rights of fair use. I am, in fact, very concerned.
Right now, Linux has yet to offer me any reason why I should go to the monumental hassle of switching and re-training myself to the new OS environment, but unlike two years ago, I can see it potentially occurring today. Drop the attitude, the lying, and the marketing BS, Microsoft--or--begin to watch your customer base slip away.
Backwards compatible is no big deal -- your typical DVD player can read CD, VCD, etc. formats. The real question is whether consumers will be ready for yet another format change by 2010. Somehow I doubt it. If you go by the previous cycle, it took about 15 years before consumers were ready to buy DVD players.
Also, we don't want to give Hollywood and the DVDCCA another shot at locking us out. The CSS cat is permanently out of the bag for the lifetime of the DVD format, but a new format would provide them an opportunity to come up with some sort of freedom-restricting technology.
Just play it straight.
on
802.11 RF Amp
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· Score: 2
I wonder when ISPs are going to stop soft-pedaling the anti-NATing provisions in their terms of service.
I wonder when ISP's are going to realize that it is futile to say "no NAT" or "no servers" or "max transfer gb per month" and realize that the only sane thing to do is to provide unrestricted access, and simply charge their customers what it actually costs to provide xx mb of bandwidth?
Let's not beat around the bush. Heavy users pay for heavy bandwidth. Light users pay for less bandwidth, and get less bandwidth. Trying to weasel out of providing less than the amount of data that the pipe can carry is a waste of everyone's time.
Slashdot Mirror
To quote their page, "FCS is envisioned as a networked 'system of systems" that will include robotic reconnaissance vehicles and sensors; tactical mobile robots; mobile command, control and communications platforms; networked fires from futuristic ground and air platforms; and advanced three-dimensional targeting systems operating on land and in the air.'
Oh, great. They're building SkyNet.
All robots. All automated. All computer controlled. And they're using Linux. Who'd have thought lil' Tux would eventually bring about the end of civilization? Linux's reliability means that SkyNet will become self-aware and overthrow the humans many years sooner than it would otherwise have done. At least if they ran Windoze we could rest assured that it would eventually collapse due to bluescreens or worms/viruses. But it's running Linux and will therefore be undefeatable. I fear the end is near...
I am a happy X user.
Since this is a story about X, all of the pre-programmed Slashbots are going to trot out and declare that X is broken, old, badly designed, missing features, whatever.
Meanwhile, the XFree86 team continues, release after release, to pound out great code that addresses all of the shortcomings people tend to cite. Faster direct rendering? Check. Anti-aliased text? Check. Multi-head? Check. Video extensions? Check. 3-D? Check.
Do you see a pattern here? X is versatile. X is extensible. X is the industry standard -- all Unix GUI programs use it.
And as always, X's killer feature is its network transparency. No "desktop-within-a-desktop" nonsense like you have to do on other platforms. Today I had the windows of programs from no less than three different computers running on my desktop. Transparently. Lots of X users do this every day, usually without even thinking about it.
Perhaps someday the tired old "X is obsolete and must be replaced" will finally cease. But today is probably not that day. Let the flames begin. I will ignore them and continue to praise the XFree86 developers for another job well done.
Throw away your video card? Throw away your other slotted peripherals? Replace them with something that uses an Intel-proprietary bus?
Didn't IBM try this a decade and a half ago? Intel needs to read up on something called Micro Channel and learn why it didn't work for IBM, and it won't work for them either.
Intel needs to tread carefully. They may be Chipzilla today, but something like this could be the turning point, like Micro Channel was for IBM, where they turned the screws a little too tight and the customers fled to something more open.
"I'm not an economist, but I think sometime in the next five years you'll see that turn around," he said. "And I think the advances we're making this year and next year will be part of the reason that will turn around ... the extra productivity and efficiency that Web services and the new form factors, simpler forms of communication will bring will help drive that productivity."
I can't believe it. Ok, well, actually I can. How much sheer arrogance does it take for Gates to claim that the economy will recover when, and only when, Microsoft "innovations" make it possible?
This is the kind of thing that makes me want to just reach through the screen and choke the living sh*t out of Gates. He's a megalomaniac evil businessman posing as a lovable geek. And people buy it.
Wasn't it just a few days ago that someone on "Ask Slashdot" was looking for a value-priced notebook whose purchase price did not include the Microsoft tax?
This really is a breakthrough, despite it being LindowsOS. This is, perhaps, the first time you can buy a truly Linux-preloaded notebook, as opposed to some of those other "boutique" shops where a Linux machine costs 50-100% more than the same machine loaded with Windows from a first-tier vendor (usually because they simply bought the machine from one of those first-tier vendors and then threw away the Windows license).
But as usual, Slashdotters will find something to complain about. I'm not complaining. As enamoured as I am with my ThinkPad (which I bought used), if I were in the market for a notebook computer right now, I'd give this one some serious consideration.
This is the first time in history that a notebook vendor isn't charging you more for a computer with an operating system that costs less. Even if the very first thing you do is erase LindowsOS and install RedHat, this is still a significant milestone.
Where did this article come from?
...the components of Carter's mind!
But he's adding to it!
It is kind of curious that Microsoft would choose Connectix's product for its virtualization. For those not familiar with it -- Connectix Virtual PC is a little more elaborate than VMware because it actually emulates the i386 CPU in software. This is why it works, for example, on a Macintosh, while VMware doesn't.
Now, it should be patently obvious that Microsoft doesn't want you running Linux-on-Windows, Windows-on-Linux, Windows-on-Mac, or anything other than Windows-on-Windows. So you have to wonder what they're up to, here.
When you don't have cross-OS stuff to worry about, why emulate the hardware? For that matter, why emulate a computer at all? For Linux-on-Linux applications, you probably won't choose VMware when you can instead run User Mode Linux -- it uses the hardware more efficiently, you can share filesystems between the host and virtuals using NFS, and it runs the host OS's native binaries. I would think Microsoft would prefer to go this route.
Or perhaps Microsoft has finally decided that Itanium is an ongoing disaster and they need an Intel exit strategy? Hmmm...
Once again, the editors of Slashdot want you to think that the BBS is a product of days gone by. I'm here to remind everyone that those days never ended.
I've been running UNCENSORED! BBS since 1988 and it's still a hip, hot, totally-whats-happening hobby. The community is still there. The fun is still there. The comraderie is still there.
The only thing that isn't still there is the modem.
Slashdot likes to position itself as "what came after the BBS" but with the amount of volume a zillion users generate, you just can't replace the "folksy" feel of your favorite BBS. Get out there and BBS, folks!
Yes, Microsoft is a monopoly.
Yes, Microsoft is attempting to protect-and-extend their monopoly.
Yes, this is illegal.
So what? When you have the White House in your back pocket, you can pretty much do whatever you want without regard to its legality.
Why use a desktop computer at all? I'm more impressed by services like Vonage. They give you a little POTS-to-Ethernet gizmo that you plug in anywhere behind your firewall, and you just connect any phone to it. Pick up the receiver and you hear a dial tone. Dial a number and it goes out over the Internet. You never have to bother with the computer. The computer doesn't even have to be turned on. Let's face it, if you're a geek, or even a lesser gadget freak, you've already got multiple computers sitting behind a firewall or mini-router on a broadband connection. So you just plug this thing in and go.
QuickNet's service appears to be cheaper. I was going to sign up for it, but I don't like the idea of having to have a program running on a desktop to keep the dial tone available. That's the problem with most Windows-based programs that do things like this, and it's no better when someone does it on Linux. (Ok, it's a little better, but this type of thing belongs either in a daemon or in dedicated hardware.)
Blocking port 25 is not the answer. It creates more problems than it solves. I am a senior sysadmin at a mid size hosting center, and we run mail services for a lot of our customers. The single biggest problem with mail is dealing with ISP's that block port 25.
Saying "oh, just run it on a different port" is not as simple as it sounds to us geeks. Sure, we offer SMTP on another port to get around those ISP's, but your typical nontechnical user doesn't even understand the problem, much less know how to apply the workaround. And during the time they can't send mail, they're blaming you. They're blaming your "broken" mail service, because the mailbox their ISP provided them with is working just fine.
So you set up the nonstandard port and tell them "point it here." Now you're wasting untold amounts of tech support time on the phone with the nontechnical users -- you have to figure out what operating system and e-mail client they're using, and hopefully it's a setup that someone in your tech support organization is familiar with. Then you have to walk them through the process of setting up SMTP on a nonstandard port, and setting up authentication if necessary. During that time, you've spent enough tech support time to make that account unprofitable this month, and the spammers have found some other way to deliver their mail anyway.
Blocking egress on port 25 is not a good solution.
Combine this with the fact that as of late, both GNOME and KDE are very intuitive and usable... Shawn may be right. When Red Hat 8 came out I tried the BlueCurve desktop and I really liked it. I started in KDE mode, but over the last couple of weeks I've been running it in GNOME mode and I really didn't notice a difference. That says something important.
Last summer I was building a two foot high poured-concrete wall ... extending one, actually, at the edge of my patio, where a big oak tree had been taken down. Well, I poured the concrete in and it turned out that I hadn't bought enough.
So I went down into the basement and pulled out all the old computer crap I could find -- old hard disk drives, AOL CD's, ISA boards of various types, etc. and just threw them into the cement mix until the level rose to where I wanted the wall to be.
Perhaps someday after I die (or move) someone will dismantle that wall. When they do, they'll unearth some hard disk drives, complete with a 1997 or 1998 vintage of Red Hat Linux and other software of the time.
You don't have the right to trespass on someone else's network. Ever. You can contact them and discuss the problem; if that does not produce satisfactory results, you contact their ISP (and so on, up the chain, until you eventually talk to a Tier-1 ISP).
There is always a way to take care of the situation. Nobody wants to have their Internet service cancelled by an upstream provider because they violated their TOS by ignoring reports of a DoS attack originating on their network.
And your immediate reaction shouldn't be to launch an attack back at them. It should be to block the offending network at your own firewall. Come on people, this is Network Administration 101. I can't believe it's even being discussed.
Seriously folks, let's not do too much AOL bashing here. AOL is one of the giants of the tech industry -- one of the few big enough to hold its own against Microsoft. That's saying a lot. Their 35 million subscriber base dwarfs MSN's.
What would the Internet look like if those 35 million were MSN subscribers? Do you honestly expect the Internet would be nearly as open as it is today? We might have that closed-loop that Gates envisioned in the original version of The Road Ahead.
Although I'm not an AOL subscriber myself, I for one am glad it's there, and I hope they continue to retain their sizable lead in the ISP market. We need that balance.
And let's not forget that AOL funds the bulk of Mozilla development. I show my thankfulness for that by using the branded Netscape browser and patronizing the branded Netscape portal. You should, too.
"Built-in commercials" worked in the days of old because there was no such thing as syndication. A program aired once (usually live) and that was it. So you had sponsors paying for that airtime, and they got their advertising in.
Not so today.
When a program is recorded, space is left for the commercials. They usually don't even know who the sponsors are yet. Then the commercials are added later. A season or two later, if it's a popular program, it's all picked up for syndication (a wild process involving conventions and stations and networks and lots of wheeling-and-dealing). The station or network airing the program in syndication will be putting in a completely different set of commercials.
See the problem here? If the commercials are irrevocably embedded into the program, they can't be removed and replaced during syndication. That means it won't syndicate at all, because the cable networks and superstations of the world won't be able to put in their own commercials. They won't be able to make back the money they paid for the programming. So, they'll either choose other programming, or if this style of programming becomes dominant, the smaller stations and networks may go away entirely.
It's kind of like forcing people to take a web browser or media player with an operating system, whether they want it or not. It puts people's eyeballs where you want them in the short term, but it screws up the flexibility for pretty much everyone else in the universe.
This has already been done. I'm surprised that more Slashdotters don't know about www.old-computers.com. Those folks have a big and impressive database full of photos and stats.
Ok, that last step is kind of extreme, and I in fact had to remove it because it broke Windows Update (which I consider a feature, not a bug, but whatever...).
Of course, why do you have Windows and IE users in your organization anyway? Simply beat them with a cluestick untill they switch to Linux and Netscape. Don't let someone who claims to be a master of reality tell you otherwise -- Linux is ready for the desktop.
By the way, you should be routing all your SMTP through a Sendmail (or postfix or whatever) relay, especially if you run Exchange. This keeps your incoming mail queued up when Exchange crashes. It also prevents Exchange from talking to other Exchange servers -- or to script kiddies.
Don't think Gimp. Think OpenOffice. Think Mozilla. Think apps that people actually want on the Mac. I've believed for a long time that Apple should be pushing really hard to make these two applications not only available, but downright pervasive on the Mac. This will eliminate Apple's indentured servitude to Microsoft and allow them to push forward in any direction they like without Microsoft threatening to pull the plug on Office (and to a lesser extent, IE) every time Apple tiptoes in a direction that offends Bill's delicate sensibilities.
Native GTK for Mac OS is a good way to kickstart apps like Moz and OO on the platform without requiring XFree86 to be installed first (which works wonderfully, but is a bit too hackish for nontechnical Mac users). Then Apple and others can begin working on making the integration more and more native-looking.
In a well-publicized memo either earlier this year or sometime during last, (I can't remember exactly which, I admit), executives at Microsoft admitted they considered Linux and open source software to be the biggest threat to their dominance and continued expansion into a variety of markets, from the home desktop and business office to the emerging TabletPC and notebook market.
After watching Microsoft closely for the last eighteen months or so, I've got to disagree. Microsoft's biggest threat isn't Linux, OpenOffice, or any piece of software at all--its themselves. Over the last eighteen months two distinctly different Microsoft cultures have emerged, often in opposition to each other.
Microsoft has, in fact, released some excellent products over the last eighteen months, as well as made some important and noteworthy advancements. Windows XP has proven itself as an extremely capable "bridge" product between the stability / power of Windows 2000 and the compatibility of the Win9x-era world of software. While there may not be many compelling reasons for Windows 2000 users to upgrade to Windows XP, there's no reason for Windows XP users to downgrade to 2K. Compared to Microsoft's Windows ME release, where many unfortunates stuck with the OS fixed their problems by installing the OLDER Windows 98SE, Windows XP has been quite a success. We've seen other solid products and developments in the X-Box, prototype TabletPC's, and the just-released DirectX 9. Overall, while Microsoft remains decidedly lackluster in areas like security, I have to say they've improved the overall quality of their product dramatically and deserve recognition for having done so.
The Dr. Jekyll of the Redmond campus may well be the collective body of programmers and designers--the true technicians--working on the software giants vast body of programs, operating systems, and other projects. If these were the people running the company, I daresay Microsoft would be perceived very differently by the collective IT community, but this is not the case.
The other aspect of Microsoft, and unfortunately, the dominant one, seems to be reserved for a type of marketing peon whose former job involved financial extortion, pathological lying, or a brief stint as one of Lucifer's demons. The sheer number of mis-steps made by this branch of Microsoft are difficult to remember, but some of the highlights include:
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The increasing levels of spyware and "digital rights management" integrated into Windows, including revelations that Windows Media Player tracks (and reports) what you view, the OS requires "authentication", and the Office suite is known for randomly (and incorrectly) claiming that the computer's hardware configuration has been changed--and requiring reactivation before it will function.
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The integration of a new type of licensing program designed to lock businesses into a permanent upgrade cycle, force them to pay for products they don't necessarily need, and, in general, suck a great deal more money into Microsoft's already overflowing coffers.
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The further claim by the Redmond company that the heavy resistance they encountered from the business market over implementing the above scheme was caused by customer's who "didn't understand" the benefit of such a program. Personally, I'd say they understood just fine--and what they understood was that your product is going to cost them a great deal more money, while providing a very questionable amount of additional value.
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The recently-revealed fact that Microsoft, in effect, offered states a bribe in order to drop their anti-trust suits against the Redmond giant. While I hold the states equally responsible for accepting the money in the first place, Redmond is known for displaying a remarkable level of NIH syndrome (Not Invented Here) perhaps only equaled by Steve Job's unparalleled Reality Distortion Field.
* A wonderful offering by Microsoft to donate thousands of ancient PC's running Windows 3.1 or even (gasp) Windows 95 to schools all across America in a move that would not only seed America's education system with a plethora of outdated, useless equipment but (coincidentally) take shots at Apple's market share. Really, the Apple angle is incidental, but the level of equipment MS's supposedly generous offering would extend is beyond contempt. You're telling me a company with forty billion dollars in cash reserves cannot afford to at least extend new PC's?
There were others--it's already emerged that MS developed a mobile phone under cooperation with a British company, with the firm expectation that the two would go to market together, only to dump them altogether, AFTER extracting the company's proprietary information. Then, of course, there's the company's attack on an Australian charity for daring to give away ancient Windows PC's that MIGHT be improperly registered. We're not even talking XP, or even 2K hardware here--we're talking Windows 95.
Add it all up and what you have is a company that, at the least, displays a profound level of arrogance coupled with the unshakable belief that they have not only the ability, but the right to dictate to the rest of the world, from charities to corporations, how the world should look. The only place we see Microsoft backing away from this type of overlord status is when it comes to organizations such as the RIAA or MPAA--and there, rather than standing strong as a champion of consumer's rights (its customers) the company has chosen to slavishly ally itself with them, incorporating ever-larger restrictions into its operating systems on how users can and can't use their equipment--and how they'll be monitored for doing so.
In response to these draconian measures we see government after government launching studies into the feasibilities of switching to open source software, school corporations investigating it, and end-users embracing it. Microsoft's response to this movement, thus far, has been characteristic of the brutal arrogance that the company typically displays. When some of the wealthiest counties in Washingston State began investigating switching to open source software, it was EXACTLY those counties that Microsoft targeted for a supposedly "random" audit, required that audit to take place within the middle of the school year, and informed school officials they had only six weeks to carry it out. Coincidence?
Now we see Microsoft launching seminars on open source software (you can safely guess its not promoted) and inundating senators, foreign governments, and anyone who will listen with all the reasons why OSS should absolutely NOT be considered as a possible solution. The first irony present in the entire situation is that this does them little good in the long run. Dragging people into rooms and inundating them with FUD may convince a few, but in the end, you'll lose a lot more than you'll convert.
Secondly ironic is Microsoft's own desire to seemingly destroy themselves at the precise moment their software is gaining some concrete technical merit. At the time when their operating system is actually becoming a product someone might want to run (as opposed to having no other choice), we see them burying it under a wave of spyware and fair-use-infringing "options" that seem purposefully designed to piss off their buyer constituency.
Ultimately, Linux is only Microsoft's biggest enemy because it represents a possible, cheaper alternative that can run on native x86 hardware without requiring an entire platform shift to Macintosh. Its not Linux Microsoft can't stand--its competition.
Its time for Redmond to wake up and smell the coffee. The businesses and governments testing Linux today are going to be the forefront of its adopters tomorrow, especially if your licensing restrictions and wallet-gutting pricing don't ease. Find a way to respond to the privacy, licensing cost, and fair-use regulation concerns of your buyers, or be prepared to be shoved out of the market. Before you arrogantly claim it couldn't possibly happen to you, take a good look at companies like Apple, IBM, or 3dfx who's names were once SYNONYMOUS with computing--and who now, without exception, are either dead or relegated to niche markets in the areas they once utterly dominated.
I'm no Linux user. I've never booted a distro of the OS in any of its flavors, and save for playing with it on a friend's machine, I've never spent much time in it. I am not an open source maverick, nor am I anti-business or anti-profit. What I am, however, is concerned about how Redmond intends to safeguard my privacy, my right to use an operating system as I see fit, and my rights of fair use. I am, in fact, very concerned.
Right now, Linux has yet to offer me any reason why I should go to the monumental hassle of switching and re-training myself to the new OS environment, but unlike two years ago, I can see it potentially occurring today. Drop the attitude, the lying, and the marketing BS, Microsoft--or--begin to watch your customer base slip away.
"Given enough time and resources, Microsoft will eventually invent UNIX."
Backwards compatible is no big deal -- your typical DVD player can read CD, VCD, etc. formats. The real question is whether consumers will be ready for yet another format change by 2010. Somehow I doubt it. If you go by the previous cycle, it took about 15 years before consumers were ready to buy DVD players.
Also, we don't want to give Hollywood and the DVDCCA another shot at locking us out. The CSS cat is permanently out of the bag for the lifetime of the DVD format, but a new format would provide them an opportunity to come up with some sort of freedom-restricting technology.
I wonder when ISP's are going to realize that it is futile to say "no NAT" or "no servers" or "max transfer gb per month" and realize that the only sane thing to do is to provide unrestricted access, and simply charge their customers what it actually costs to provide xx mb of bandwidth?
Let's not beat around the bush. Heavy users pay for heavy bandwidth. Light users pay for less bandwidth, and get less bandwidth. Trying to weasel out of providing less than the amount of data that the pipe can carry is a waste of everyone's time.