obviously there's going to be disagreement on this point, but i'd say yes. i'm currently running potato and suse7.1 (as well as the obligatory win partition on the suse box so i can run good music production apps; the debian box is a worthless old 486 that's mainly just for fucking around on) and later in the week i'm planning on playing with rh7.1
the fact that debian's frozen releases are among the most stable (only computers that are powered down beat debian's stability, afaik,) is very appreciated when i'm playing with the system. i'm a fairly new user of linux, so it's kind of a comfort to know that if something's not working, it's probably something i did and not a system screwup.
i've heard that debian isn't a real new-user-friendly distro, but it's certainly a learning experience.
-d. -- Slashdot: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
Right now most commercial developers simply target RedHat, and then let the rest of us that don't use RedHat sort out how we are going to get the software to run on our platform o' choice. Sometimes, for various reasons, the commercial vendor will even admit to supporting several different distributions, but they don't like the work that this takes, especially considering the size of the market.
...considering the size of the market isn't really an issue w/r/t standards. Linux is not as ubiquitous as MS-win9x/NT/LMNOP (or whatever new letters they're going to fuck with this next quarter). There's tons of linux users, and there's a ton of instances of linux (in the workplace, servers, embedded devices, etc.) but this isn't the nightmare that it would be if linux were as ubiquitous as windows. now is the time to set a standard and be a hard-ass about it. it would be nice to set a broad standard w/r/t desktops, but not feasable right now. the easiest shortcut around this particular prob right now would probably be two or three different standards -- one for gnome and one for KDE and possibly a simpler standard for those who don't want the weight of either.
-d. -- Slashdot: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
Everyone knows we never have reboot our Linux boxen anyway. ('cept to add new hardware of course.)
you have to reboot to detect new hardware? this is why windows is better than linux, it's Plug 'n' Play bug^H^H^Hfeature means i never have to reboot...the machine usually just crashes or GPFs for me -- i don't have to do anything!
-d.
-- Slashdot: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
Or, in other words, this solves the same problem as RSA and D-H key exchange techniques. Once both sides have agreed on keys, you could use carrier pigeons for the actual excrypted data transmission.
of course, pigeons are traditionally really hard to write on, even with sharpie pens.
-d. -- Slashdot: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
since i'm sure you've noticed those Microsoft ads in magazines (and newspapers, and tv, etc.) i'm wondering if any of that huge wad of cash IBM is spending on linux will go towards advertising in mainstream media. Linux Journal and other trade magazines will take your money, but they won't earn you any customers.
so, any tv ads in the future? a cute little anime Tux smashing store windows in a riot scene (a la Seattle/Canada, WTO protests). you can use Annie Lennox's "Walking On Broken Glass" as the theme music!
...just a thought.
-d. -- Slashdot: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
The MPAA isn't going to 'give up' on DVD any time soon...what they might do instead is change the specs.
say you've got your dvd player. oh wait, here's 5.1 -- you say you've got that? wait, here's super extra hi-definition dvd, in 8.9 internal surround sound, including a speaker to shove up your ass so you can really feel the bass in your new copy of the stanley kubrick box set, the one with all his movies, the extras we didn't include in your first copy, and exclusive to this third reissuing of it, a newly discovered movie of his he shot when he was 17. now, only 150$...again.
-d.
-- Slashdot: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
It only re-inforces the non-professional image that Microsoft is trying to portray of Open Source.
gee, you make it sound like linux/Open Source Software is a Serious Thing.
the mascot is a penguin. the kernel's source is full of words like "fuck" (see an earlier posting by some other guy for a funny example of this.)
this is not some soulless corp. we're talking about -- it's a whole bunch of people, doing something in more or less same direction.
-d. -- Slashdot: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
Re:There is no reasonable expectation of privacy
on
Carnivore To Die?
·
· Score: 1
...reading this post, it occurs to me that balmers' words on open source (OSS is a cancer) will eventually change (in the eyes of the public,) to fact;
boss: what's this free thing i hear about? linix?
MCSE: oh you shouldn't use that, i heard it causes cancer!
boss: that'd raise our insurance premiums!
it's like that children's game "telephone" where you pass a normal phrase like 'jane went to the store for milk.' from one person to the next and the last person's message has been so completely fubared that it comes out to 'janet jackson eats children for breakfast'.
-d. -- Slashdot: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
SLASHDOT: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
...hmmm...bunch of companies no-one cares about or has any faith in...together to make a set of standards that by definition will have to be unbelievably flexible. this is vaporware, and even if it comes through, these standards will be all but useless. the machine that is used for server purposes should not be the same machine used as a desktop machine (or games machine, or for music, or development, or....) the only way this is going to happen on a microsoft-like scale is if two or three distros (red hat, debian, suse, et al,) get together and agree to combine efforts (apt-get is usefull enough that all distros should have a standardized version of it, ditto RPM and a standardized installer is a must). it would also be a Good Thing if IBM diverted some of that money they're promising for Linux and threw 1/3 of that to standards development (as it is, they'll prolly develop their _own_ standards) and another 1/3 to advertising (REAL advertising, like on TV, or full-page business magazine ads, not this spray-paint the town red bullshit.)
-d. -- Slashdot: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
How much Linux code is actually in Windows? Haha, just joking. Windows would be a lot stabler if it had any
actually, all you really need is to change SET_BUGS=1 into SET_BUGS=0 and all versions of Win will outperform all other OSes. the bitch is getting the source...ohwait, it'snot. -- Slashdot: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
as i see it, music has split into two seperate camps right now: there's really popular stuff (kiddie bopper music like NSync and Brittney Spears, but also very commercial country like Garth Brooks or Shania Twain, as well as rap/hip-hop/r'n'b that is either 'street' (read: "psuedo-threatening") or 'sexy' (read: "pseudo-threatening") as well as polished enough to market on eMpTyV.
disclosure: i like pop. i liked it when i was a teeny bopper in high school, i like it now. the beatles' music will always be good -- but for the most part, it will also always be pop.
the other "musical camp" i see forming is very isolated anti-marketing disenfranchised music. (there's also the variation on this, like radiohead or REM, who seem hate the public eye, but haven't tossed in the towel yet. i like to think of this as 'pseudo-disenfranchisement'). but take most electronic music these days, as an example. there's a big-ish market for it, but very few artists have stepped up to the plate and said "yes, i will gladly sell my soul for millions and millions and millions of dollars." (moby perhaps being the most annoying exception, imo.) most fans of electronic music that i know feel as if they're the only ones, or at most, part of a small group. the you go to an orbital show and --hey presto!-- there's 4000 people in your city who you would never have guessed listened to electronica. there's bands that have intentionally avoided the lure of major-label success (cf. the amazing band Godspeed You Black Emperor! whose songs' blatant anti-corp. attitude should be an adbusters.org pep-rally theme). but they're well known...they're just not ubiquitously famous like, say, Brittney.
i do have a point: the advent of technology (and ubiquity thereof,) has made good music by good musicians easier to make and distribute. if you like death metal, you join a death-metal mailing list and you'll have access to a fucking worldwide network of people who have similar tastes...some of which will invariably be making some of that music themselves.
most musicians i know couldn't give the tiniest shit about being famous; and most would content themselves with making enough money to pay for expenses, equipment, etc.
so, for the most part, they'll give it away, or at the very least, sell it to you for very cheap prices. (e.g., mp3.com, or selling via home pages, etc. i've seen people going from doing this to releasing stuff on indie labels, which may not pay for that new-giant-organic-living-breathing-LCD-monitor, but will certainly ease the pressures off the artist personally.)
this is not to say that the major labels will all die overnight; i doubt that they'll ever die. but the people who give a shit about the music they listen to -- and however much the latest teen hit sensation(s) shake body parts, they're never going to write anything with the meaning of any 60's or 70's rock song -- will slowly fade further into the margins (they just don't make classic rock like they used to...) until several things happen:
A) major labels try to market pseudo-classic-rock(or your favourite non-mainstream style of music) and fail miserably.
II) online music services die (well...napster, anyway. USENET and gnutella won't ever really die.) the good thing about this is that indie labels will thrive again.
thirdly,) everyone will give up watching TV, attend live concerts, read more, think independently often, and not blindly follow what they see on TV.
well, I can dream.
-d. -- Slashdot: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
i picked up the audio book version of this about five days ago. i am listening to disc 3 now, actually.
short review: avoid it.
longer version: david diamond's reading is beyond uninspired, and sounds more or less like when kid who couldn't read too fast was asked to read aloud in your class in sixth grade. linus' contributions are few and far between, and if anything, are more uninspired and read in a more herky-jerky manner than diamond (although this isn't a slam on LT; i understand english is not his native language, and he's not a professional author/speaker -- regardless, this is how his readings come off to me.) another minor beef is that it's copyrighted; i can understand that the publisher would have balked at making a book GPL'ed, but the audio book? occasionally, this is a great sample source and i'm probably going to snap a few seconds from each disc to add to a few songs i'm writing -- of course, with the copyrighting, i'll have to alter the samples a lot. another nitpick is something other posters have also pointed out: where's the credit to the other authors? alan cox, RMS, wtf? where's the tip of the hat to them? if you must get it, pick it up used or on discount. the OS is great, and the things you can do with it are great, but the story of the guy who helped make the OS is so-so. not a bad book, just tepid. caveat emptor.
-d. -- Slashdot: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
...real shame that they're going to put out unfinished stuff of his; while i don't think that everything he wrote is fit to be carved into marble blocks ("mostly harmless" was particularly cynical and had little of the humor and ridiculousness that attracted me to his other books,) the first four books of the trilogy, the dirk gently novels and "last chance to see" were great great great books. at best, this means the movie will be out sooner than expected (i.e., sometime in the next few years, not "when hell freezes over"); but by the same token, some of the genius of DNA's humor will most likely be cheapened.
at least there's still this. -- Slashdot: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
There are no such albums being made these days, and that's intentional.
There are, actually. Take the case of Mr. Bungle. They're a great band. They have rabid, absolutely, fscking RABID fans. Their singer (Mike Patton) used to sing in Faith No More; the bands are totally different, but the point stands that FNM had a couple of hits in the early 90's. Their label, (Warner Bros.) has done beyond nothing to promote Mr. Bungle. No airplay, no promotion, no help with touring, with getting singles on the radio. When their last album came out (California) the band played tiny clubs that were sold out and had to resort to organising their very rabid fans into trying to get their 'airplay suitable' songs on air. Part of the reason why there's no more "classic" music anymore (ie, music that 20 years from now we'll all consider as historic as the beatles, led zeppelin, whatever) is that this catergory has been taken over by country. Rap/Hip-hop/R&B is disposable music (not a matter of taste; i'm not judging the music--i like the music; but do you think Sisquo's "The Thong Song" is going to be remembered in a year? in 10? The few exceptions to this have been groundbreaking acts like N.W.A., Dr. Dre, et al. and they've succeeded largely by scaring white suburban parents.) so ten years from now, you'll have Tim McGraw advertising Budweiser (or Alex Chiu's immortality bracelets or whatever.)
it's a debatable matter that Mr. Bungle's records will still be considered great in 20 years -- in my eyes, probably yes. regardless, it'll never be used to advertise beer (free or otherwise) because no one will have heard it, and it'll be too wierd, and it'll be too wierd because no one will have heard it.
-d. -- "If you're really evil, let's see you EAT THIS KITTEN!"
We here at http://sourceforge.net/projects/irradiatedkangaroo s/home.html have taken several OS projects and implemented a modified 'hello world' (now 'goodbye koalas') but are still desperately seeking coders. our irradiatedkangaroo project will hopefully reach 1.0 some time before the year is out... -- "If you're really evil, let's see you EAT THIS KITTEN!"
So what if XP is a failure. They'll change the license for Win2k to a time-based one and poof the monopoly is complete. These guys are classic Monopolists and as soon as they can lock everyone one into their party (they are very very close now), innovation will nearly stop. No monopolist will invest in his marketplace when he has absolute control and a reliable income stream. That is what XP is about. The terminal technology while MS goes off and attempts to dominate all the other software marketplaces.
XP (or another time-based license for an MS product that succeeds,) would be the best thing that could happen to linux/open source free software. all it would take is a ton of people getting the MSwindowsErrorMessage: "Sorry, it's time to pay again for the operating system you've already bought once;
Microsoft WindowsThis is where you will go today: MSBillPaymentWebPage.
...that, quickly followed by an IBM commercial (or Red Hat, or whatever distro could afford it,) advertising campaign that said something to the effect of: "Linux: free, every year, guaranteed." and mentioning how it's more reliable than any MS product, and Linux companies will make money hand over fist.
-d. -- "If you're really evil, let's see you EAT THIS KITTEN!"
On the topic of symbolism, I'm reminded of something. Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick, was asked by a group of critics what the whale symbolized. He simply answered, "A whale." Sometimes I think we try to dig too deep for meaning in what others do. The counter point given by the author I think is such a case.
while it is true that Melville did not originally realise the nature of the symbolism in his own work* the symbolism is there and undeniable. read moby dick again.
-d.
*truth to tell, this is debatable: a critic pointed out the whole whale/ahab/ishmael/god/man/nature symbolism going on all over the place, and melville was like 'symbolism? where?' although history does not note whether he was sarcastic, he was, by all accounts, a Serious Man Who Did Not Fuck Around (artistically speaking.)
--
-- "If you're really evil, let's see you EAT THIS KITTEN!"
consider: if these take off, and become really popular, they'll bring the prices of proper laptops down.
whati've always wanted, and haven't been able to find, is a laptop with a fold out keyboard -- you know those folding keyboards for PDAs? something like that. the only negative point i can think of would be fragility/breakability, but those have traditionally been laptop's weaknesses (along with price/expandability...and it's much harder to forget your desktop box in a car/office/hotel.)
a friend and i have a not-so-secret plan to hook up a desktop box to one of those aluminum hiking pack frames. i supposed you'd need a second person(w/ pack, natch,)to carry the monitor. and of course, always hike in forests with electrical outlets.
-d. --
-- "If you're really evil, let's see you EAT THIS KITTEN!"
as others have said, running the prog in chroot jail will do the trick, you could also: a) make sure your backups -- you do have backups, right?-- are current;
b) turn on scripting to see what files get changed
c) install.
d) compare and reconfigure.
alternately, Bastille is a great resource (last i checked it was red-hat(-and-derived) dependent, but that was a while ago, so that may have changed.
-- "If you're really evil, let's see you EAT THIS KITTEN!"
Slashdot Mirror
obviously there's going to be disagreement on this point, but i'd say yes. i'm currently running potato and suse7.1 (as well as the obligatory win partition on the suse box so i can run good music production apps; the debian box is a worthless old 486 that's mainly just for fucking around on) and later in the week i'm planning on playing with rh7.1
the fact that debian's frozen releases are among the most stable (only computers that are powered down beat debian's stability, afaik,) is very appreciated when i'm playing with the system. i'm a fairly new user of linux, so it's kind of a comfort to know that if something's not working, it's probably something i did and not a system screwup.
i've heard that debian isn't a real new-user-friendly distro, but it's certainly a learning experience.
-d.
--
Slashdot: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
Right now most commercial developers simply target RedHat, and then let the rest of us that don't use RedHat sort out how we are going to get the software to run on our platform o' choice. Sometimes, for various reasons, the commercial vendor will even admit to supporting several different distributions, but they don't like the work that this takes, especially considering the size of the market.
...considering the size of the market isn't really an issue w/r/t standards. Linux is not as ubiquitous as MS-win9x/NT/LMNOP (or whatever new letters they're going to fuck with this next quarter). There's tons of linux users, and there's a ton of instances of linux (in the workplace, servers, embedded devices, etc.) but this isn't the nightmare that it would be if linux were as ubiquitous as windows. now is the time to set a standard and be a hard-ass about it. it would be nice to set a broad standard w/r/t desktops, but not feasable right now. the easiest shortcut around this particular prob right now would probably be two or three different standards -- one for gnome and one for KDE and possibly a simpler standard for those who don't want the weight of either.
-d.
--
Slashdot: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
Everyone knows we never have reboot our Linux boxen anyway. ('cept to add new hardware of course.)
you have to reboot to detect new hardware? this is why windows is better than linux, it's Plug 'n' Play bug^H^H^Hfeature means i never have to reboot...the machine usually just crashes or GPFs for me -- i don't have to do anything!
-d.
--
Slashdot: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
Or, in other words, this solves the same problem as RSA and D-H key exchange techniques. Once both sides have agreed on keys, you could use carrier pigeons for the actual excrypted data transmission.
of course, pigeons are traditionally really hard to write on, even with sharpie pens.
-d.
--
Slashdot: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
since i'm sure you've noticed those Microsoft ads in magazines (and newspapers, and tv, etc.) i'm wondering if any of that huge wad of cash IBM is spending on linux will go towards advertising in mainstream media. Linux Journal and other trade magazines will take your money, but they won't earn you any customers.
so, any tv ads in the future? a cute little anime Tux smashing store windows in a riot scene (a la Seattle/Canada, WTO protests). you can use Annie Lennox's "Walking On Broken Glass" as the theme music!
...just a thought.
-d.
--
Slashdot: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
say you've got your dvd player. oh wait, here's 5.1 -- you say you've got that? wait, here's super extra hi-definition dvd, in 8.9 internal surround sound, including a speaker to shove up your ass so you can really feel the bass in your new copy of the stanley kubrick box set, the one with all his movies, the extras we didn't include in your first copy, and exclusive to this third reissuing of it, a newly discovered movie of his he shot when he was 17. now, only 150$ ...again.
-d.
--
Slashdot: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
It only re-inforces the non-professional image that Microsoft is trying to portray of Open Source.
gee, you make it sound like linux/Open Source Software is a Serious Thing.
the mascot is a penguin. the kernel's source is full of words like "fuck" (see an earlier posting by some other guy for a funny example of this.)
this is not some soulless corp. we're talking about -- it's a whole bunch of people, doing something in more or less same direction.
-d.
--
Slashdot: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
...reading this post, it occurs to me that balmers' words on open source (OSS is a cancer) will eventually change (in the eyes of the public,) to fact;
boss: what's this free thing i hear about? linix?
MCSE: oh you shouldn't use that, i heard it causes cancer!
boss: that'd raise our insurance premiums!
it's like that children's game "telephone" where you pass a normal phrase like 'jane went to the store for milk.' from one person to the next and the last person's message has been so completely fubared that it comes out to 'janet jackson eats children for breakfast'.
-d.
--
Slashdot: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
SLASHDOT: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
-d.
--
Slashdot: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
actually, all you really need is to change SET_BUGS=1 into SET_BUGS=0 and all versions of Win will outperform all other OSes. the bitch is getting the source...oh wait, it's not.
--
Slashdot: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
disclosure: i like pop. i liked it when i was a teeny bopper in high school, i like it now. the beatles' music will always be good -- but for the most part, it will also always be pop.
the other "musical camp" i see forming is very isolated anti-marketing disenfranchised music. (there's also the variation on this, like radiohead or REM, who seem hate the public eye, but haven't tossed in the towel yet. i like to think of this as 'pseudo-disenfranchisement'). but take most electronic music these days, as an example. there's a big-ish market for it, but very few artists have stepped up to the plate and said "yes, i will gladly sell my soul for millions and millions and millions of dollars." (moby perhaps being the most annoying exception, imo.) most fans of electronic music that i know feel as if they're the only ones, or at most, part of a small group. the you go to an orbital show and --hey presto!-- there's 4000 people in your city who you would never have guessed listened to electronica. there's bands that have intentionally avoided the lure of major-label success (cf. the amazing band Godspeed You Black Emperor! whose songs' blatant anti-corp. attitude should be an adbusters.org pep-rally theme). but they're well known...they're just not ubiquitously famous like, say, Brittney.
i do have a point: the advent of technology (and ubiquity thereof,) has made good music by good musicians easier to make and distribute. if you like death metal, you join a death-metal mailing list and you'll have access to a fucking worldwide network of people who have similar tastes...some of which will invariably be making some of that music themselves.
most musicians i know couldn't give the tiniest shit about being famous; and most would content themselves with making enough money to pay for expenses, equipment, etc.
so, for the most part, they'll give it away, or at the very least, sell it to you for very cheap prices. (e.g., mp3.com, or selling via home pages, etc. i've seen people going from doing this to releasing stuff on indie labels, which may not pay for that new-giant-organic-living-breathing-LCD-monitor, but will certainly ease the pressures off the artist personally.)
this is not to say that the major labels will all die overnight; i doubt that they'll ever die. but the people who give a shit about the music they listen to -- and however much the latest teen hit sensation(s) shake body parts, they're never going to write anything with the meaning of any 60's or 70's rock song -- will slowly fade further into the margins (they just don't make classic rock like they used to...) until several things happen:
A) major labels try to market pseudo-classic-rock(or your favourite non-mainstream style of music) and fail miserably.
II) online music services die (well...napster, anyway. USENET and gnutella won't ever really die.) the good thing about this is that indie labels will thrive again.
thirdly,) everyone will give up watching TV, attend live concerts, read more, think independently often, and not blindly follow what they see on TV.
well, I can dream.
-d.
--
Slashdot: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
short review: avoid it.
longer version: david diamond's reading is beyond uninspired, and sounds more or less like when kid who couldn't read too fast was asked to read aloud in your class in sixth grade. linus' contributions are few and far between, and if anything, are more uninspired and read in a more herky-jerky manner than diamond (although this isn't a slam on LT; i understand english is not his native language, and he's not a professional author/speaker -- regardless, this is how his readings come off to me.) another minor beef is that it's copyrighted; i can understand that the publisher would have balked at making a book GPL'ed, but the audio book? occasionally, this is a great sample source and i'm probably going to snap a few seconds from each disc to add to a few songs i'm writing -- of course, with the copyrighting, i'll have to alter the samples a lot. another nitpick is something other posters have also pointed out: where's the credit to the other authors? alan cox, RMS, wtf? where's the tip of the hat to them? if you must get it, pick it up used or on discount. the OS is great, and the things you can do with it are great, but the story of the guy who helped make the OS is so-so. not a bad book, just tepid. caveat emptor.
-d.
--
Slashdot: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
at least there's still this.
--
Slashdot: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
There are no such albums being made these days, and that's intentional.
There are, actually. Take the case of Mr. Bungle. They're a great band. They have rabid, absolutely, fscking RABID fans. Their singer (Mike Patton) used to sing in Faith No More; the bands are totally different, but the point stands that FNM had a couple of hits in the early 90's. Their label, (Warner Bros.) has done beyond nothing to promote Mr. Bungle. No airplay, no promotion, no help with touring, with getting singles on the radio. When their last album came out (California) the band played tiny clubs that were sold out and had to resort to organising their very rabid fans into trying to get their 'airplay suitable' songs on air. Part of the reason why there's no more "classic" music anymore (ie, music that 20 years from now we'll all consider as historic as the beatles, led zeppelin, whatever) is that this catergory has been taken over by country. Rap/Hip-hop/R&B is disposable music (not a matter of taste; i'm not judging the music--i like the music; but do you think Sisquo's "The Thong Song" is going to be remembered in a year? in 10? The few exceptions to this have been groundbreaking acts like N.W.A., Dr. Dre, et al. and they've succeeded largely by scaring white suburban parents.) so ten years from now, you'll have Tim McGraw advertising Budweiser (or Alex Chiu's immortality bracelets or whatever.)
it's a debatable matter that Mr. Bungle's records will still be considered great in 20 years -- in my eyes, probably yes. regardless, it'll never be used to advertise beer (free or otherwise) because no one will have heard it, and it'll be too wierd, and it'll be too wierd because no one will have heard it.
-d.
--
"If you're really evil, let's see you EAT THIS KITTEN!"
We here at http://sourceforge.net/projects/irradiatedkangaroo s/home.html have taken several OS projects and implemented a modified 'hello world' (now 'goodbye koalas') but are still desperately seeking coders. our irradiatedkangaroo project will hopefully reach 1.0 some time before the year is out...
--
"If you're really evil, let's see you EAT THIS KITTEN!"
That's okay, refunds are on the way...oh wait...
it could have been microsoft, trying to get the source to linux, for their own nefarious reasons.
-d.
--
"If you're really evil, let's see you EAT THIS KITTEN!"
So what if XP is a failure. They'll change the license for Win2k to a time-based one and poof the monopoly is complete. These guys are classic Monopolists and as soon as they can lock everyone one into their party (they are very very close now), innovation will nearly stop. No monopolist will invest in his marketplace when he has absolute control and a reliable income stream. That is what XP is about. The terminal technology while MS goes off and attempts to dominate all the other software marketplaces.
...that, quickly followed by an IBM commercial (or Red Hat, or whatever distro could afford it,) advertising campaign that said something to the effect of: "Linux: free, every year, guaranteed." and mentioning how it's more reliable than any MS product, and Linux companies will make money hand over fist.
XP (or another time-based license for an MS product that succeeds,) would be the best thing that could happen to linux/open source free software. all it would take is a ton of people getting the MSwindowsErrorMessage: "Sorry, it's time to pay again for the operating system you've already bought once;
Microsoft Windows This is where you will go today: MSBillPaymentWebPage.
-d.
--
"If you're really evil, let's see you EAT THIS KITTEN!"
On the topic of symbolism, I'm reminded of something. Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick, was asked by a group of critics what the whale symbolized. He simply answered, "A whale." Sometimes I think we try to dig too deep for meaning in what others do. The counter point given by the author I think is such a case.
while it is true that Melville did not originally realise the nature of the symbolism in his own work* the symbolism is there and undeniable. read moby dick again.
-d.
*truth to tell, this is debatable: a critic pointed out the whole whale/ahab/ishmael/god/man/nature symbolism going on all over the place, and melville was like 'symbolism? where?' although history does not note whether he was sarcastic, he was, by all accounts, a Serious Man Who Did Not Fuck Around (artistically speaking.)
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"If you're really evil, let's see you EAT THIS KITTEN!"
consider: if these take off, and become really popular, they'll bring the prices of proper laptops down.
whati've always wanted, and haven't been able to find, is a laptop with a fold out keyboard -- you know those folding keyboards for PDAs? something like that. the only negative point i can think of would be fragility/breakability, but those have traditionally been laptop's weaknesses (along with price/expandability...and it's much harder to forget your desktop box in a car/office/hotel.)
a friend and i have a not-so-secret plan to hook up a desktop box to one of those aluminum hiking pack frames. i supposed you'd need a second person(w/ pack, natch,)to carry the monitor. and of course, always hike in forests with electrical outlets.
-d.
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"If you're really evil, let's see you EAT THIS KITTEN!"
as others have said, running the prog in chroot jail will do the trick, you could also:
a) make sure your backups -- you do have backups, right?-- are current;
b) turn on scripting to see what files get changed
c) install.
d) compare and reconfigure.
alternately, Bastille is a great resource (last i checked it was red-hat(-and-derived) dependent, but that was a while ago, so that may have changed.
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"If you're really evil, let's see you EAT THIS KITTEN!"