Generally, a "hardware firewire" simply means a device dedicated to working as a firewall whereas a "software firewall" means a program running on the computer to be protected. It does not imply that a hardware firewall does not have a software component.
I run both a hardware and a software firewall. If one is compromised the potential intruder finds yet another. My sensitive data is also all encrypted, so even if the intruder breaks the second one he/she isn't likely to get much of value.
Personally, I think that their 400ppm limit is arbitrary and has no strong scientific merit. Even so, I think you're wrong in your dirt comparison.
Many physical systems (and mathematical systems more generally) have transition points. The most basic that comes to mind is that of state transitions: water is solid at -1C but liquid at +1C. Anyone that has had water freeze inside a sealed container can tell you just how dramatic a couple of degrees can be.
Like I said, though, I'm nit-picking. Climate models are still to rough and complex to mark a single value of a single variable as a transition state, so I think they are still full of it.
By the way, I AM seriously concerned about climate change and do believe that human behavior is alerting global climate in dangerous ways. I just hate to see people trying to claim that the Point of No Return has been found and that we're going to have PANIC RIGHT NOW.
The original task was to find a computer comparable in power, price and SIZE to the Mac mini.
The HP a700y looks like a mid-sized tower to me with 2 5.25-inch drive bays and 3 3.5-inch drive bays. From the pictures it looks like it is 18 or 19 inches tall, 8 inches wide, and maybe 15 inches deep.
I don't think this meets the criteria of "close in size".
I'm slow on responding to this, so you may never see it, but it's worth a comment or two.
I think the major benefit of which you speak (cheap and plentiful hardware) was due to IBM, not Microsoft. IBM set the PC to be an open industry standard. By doing so they benefited from a huge range of third-party add-on cards. What they didn't realize was that other companies could compete against them on the base machines themselves. The move set the PC to be commodity hardware (pushing all other architectures into niches), but eventually bankrupted the IBM PC division.
Interestingly, since Mac OS X is a *nix-based system, cross-platform development is easier. It doesn't matter half as much what hardware you use in the *nix world. That's why my Mac has access to almost all the same software that my x86 Linux box does. Sometimes it's as easy as just recompiling the source code. I don't think that having a more even marketshare mix would therefore increase development costs in any significant way.
I actually agree with you on your last point. The OS *should* be moot, and eventually will be. The only reason it isn't already is Microsoft's monopoly status. MS is fighting against the tide.
I think they ARE treading water, but I also think you are right that Ballmer is attempting to position MS so that Windows/Office aren't the only options they have for making money. Companies which are dependent on a single product (especially tech companies) run the risk that new technologies will render them irrelevant. The PC demolished the mainframe business, for example. OSS is a real threat to closed source -- which traditionally is all MS has to offer.
Why I claim MS is simply treading water, however, comes down the fact that while MS is trying quite a few new projects to develop additional revenue streams, I don't see any of them really laying a foundation for big growth. The XBox is competitive, but doesn't dominate and is sold as a loss-leader (recouped on games sales). Sony is still a huge threat in consoles, so MS is still on unstable ground there. MSN: is it even profitable? I don't know, but I think it is marginal at best. Media Centers? So far, consumers seem to have no real interest in putting a computer in the entertainment center.
No, Ballmer's trying, but he isn't succeeding. MS still doesn't have any real direction or inspiration. Then again, it's a company that has gotten lethargic because of its monopoly revenue stream. Any tech company that doesn't stay hungry has become prey rather than predator.
It's not so different than any other vendor, so why call out Apple in particular over this one?
I was generating quotes on computers for a co-worker yesterday that recently lost her house to a fire. I checked Apple, Dell and HP. In EACH case, the $500 range computers were substantially over $1000 once I added all the components you would want for a primary home system.
In terms of the Mac mini, I wouldn't buy one for my main system, but I *would* consider one as my home file server or small web server. I wouldn't add a keyboard or mouse and could stick it under my router. I'd add some RAM, but still pay no more than $700 or so.
These are also great systems for someone looking to replace an older PC with a Mac to go with their iPod (which is the market I think Apple is aiming at here). Plug in your existing monitor, add a keyboard and mouse, and you are ready to run. I would strongly recommend more RAM, but if you are just using the web, email, and iTunes it will do the job as is. Not a bad choice as a replacement for you mom's malware-laden Windows ME machine.
I don't think anyone is suggesting that putting Apple in Microsoft's position would be a good thing. What WOULD be a good thing for everyone -- whether you use Windows, OS X, or Linux -- would be for Apple to have a larger marketshare than it does currently. Why? Because competition in the OS marketplace is GOOD. It would be a much healthier market if Microsoft only had, for example, 60% of the market.
Markets without a clearly dominant player tend to be more innovative, more dynamic, and more responsive to the needs of their customers.
Apple may or may not be "less evil" than Microsoft, but regardless of that, real competition is still a Good Thing.
The cell phone companies may be listening, but they don't care. Customers like you aren't worth anything to them. Competition between providers continues to force them to provide more and more airtime for less and less money. If all you want to do is talk on your phone they aren't going to make much profit off of you.
The folks that use data services, SMS, buy games and custom ringtones, and send pics (or even better: video clips!) are where the money is.
A heavy fine or a suspension of the site (www.baazee.com) for a few days would have been a more appropiate reaction.
I have to disagree with you on that last point. Baazee took down the auction as soon as they became aware of it. They did the right thing from the very beginning as far as I can tell. There was no intent on the part of Baazee to distribute pornography.
Suppose one day someone slid some child pornography under your front door. Would you believe that you should be fined or arrested for possession of those materials? You certainly never planned on possessing those materials any more than Baazee planned on selling pornographic materials.
In situations like this there has to be intent in order for their to be wrongdoing.
I think the point being made was that no one living here prior to European colonization called the continents of the western hemisphere "America", so it struck that poster as odd that Native American should be considered the politically correct term.
Personally, (and my grandfather was a mix of Cherokee and Sioux) I prefer Native American over "descendents of aboriginal peoples of the western hemisphere", especially since the peoples of the Americas didn't actually have any word denoting the land masses now known as the Americas. Of course, for myself I usually just stick to "mutt" as I'm a major mash-up of Native and European heritage (two tribes and at least 4 European nations).
Well, Novell hasn't exactly given us any great reason to upgrade. I still have a bunch of Netware 4.11 servers which we plan to replace this coming year with Samba running on a single IBM eServer. Nothing wrong with the Netware 4.11 servers -- they do a great job, but the hardware is showing it's age. It gets harder to run old software on new hardware, so it's time to move on.
We'd consider continuing with Netware (migration would be a breeze), but the licensing is not attractive. We used to buy a few hundred perpetual client licenses per server. Now Novell wants the same sort of money for licenses that require yearly renewal.
We're a university research institute with about 350 employees. Yearly license fees eat up more money than we're willing to devote to them. With Samba 4 on the horizon, it just doesn't make any sense for us. Novell tried to get on the "yearly renewal" bandwagon, so we're migrating away from them entirely to nothing but OSS.
Not too late at all... though you may never notice that I FINALLY noticed your reply to my post.
Konquerer's extension to file system browser does make me nervous -- nervous enough not to use it for web browsing -- but not AS NERVOUS as IE because Linux has a better security model than Windows. IE basically has root access even if the user running it as a browser does not. As such, any vulnerability in IE is a root compromise. In the Linux world, a browser compromise would only give user-level access unless you are surfing the web as root. Joe User might get his home folder wiped, but/etc and/bin would generally still be safe.
Boeing DOES do commercial launches for whoever wants to hire them and does it with their own facility launching from the middle of the ocean. Is this something like that what you had in mind?
It's true that any piece of software can have security issues, but IE will ALWAYS be the most dangerous browser you can run for one simple reason:
It is also your file system browser.
Integrating a web browser (i.e. the program that messes around with places of questionable authenticity) with your file system browser (the program that connects with your most sensitive files) is just insane from a security point of view.
What you fail to realize (RTFA!) is that the exclusion prevents Americans overseas from reaching the site as well.
According to the International Herald Tribune there are up to 4.1 million Americans living abroad. They aren't just rendering the site unreachable to non-Americans, but to a good number of voters. Of course, those voters can still visit johnkerry.com...:-)
If there is one in your area, go to an Apple Store and lay your hands on one. They're really good about letting you try it out there. You can play with it enough to get a feel for whether or not it meets your speed needs. Take a CD with some big docs on them and open them up. Do a little surfing. Check your email. Play with iPhoto and iTunes.
I have a two year old PowerBook. It's beginning to feel a little sluggish to me here and there. Apps take a couple more seconds to open than I like, but I'm spoiled by having a dual 2Ghz G5 at work. EVERYTHING feels slow by comparison.
That said, the feature mix on my PowerBook is awesome in a very portable package. A few years ago I bought a dining room table for my computer at the time (a Wintel box) and it's peripherals. Now we have the PowerBook in "office nook" in the kitchen. The size and portability are huge plusses to me.
Now, if you really need a little more power, consider one of the new G5 iMacs. The housing is VESA-compliant, so you can wallmount it. Add an Airport card, wireless keyboard, and a wireless mouse if you want nothing but a power cord.
Given the trade-offs, I'd definitely make the same decision to purchase a PowerBook.
Now, as for comparing Wintel laptops to Powerbooks. I find that much of what makes a computer seem fast or slow is the smoothness with which the OS runs. The G4 chip is not going to perform as well as the newer P4 laptops. However, the OS runs VERY smoothly, so it FEELS more powerful than many Wintel laptops. Animations are silky. Expose provides incredibly slick window management when you have 20 things open in 12 different windows. Multimedia is smooth even when you are busy doing other things.
Like I said -- go try it! The Apple web site will point you to the store nearest you.
It doesn't just do it well, it does it AMAZINGLY well.
Those little white earbuds have a range of 20Hz to 20000Hz rather than the normal 50-15000 on most headphones for MP3 players. The sound quality will take your breath away! I have songs that I've played a zillion times on many different stereos, car systems, and mp3 players. When played on my iPod I can hear details I never caught before (like the tiny echoes from the room in which it was originally recorded). We play music all the time at home on our stereo, but it's my iPod I use when I really want to hear the real complexity and depth of my music collection.
The first three links are:
1 - News on an RIAA lawsuit versus a man without a computer
2 - News on an RIAA suit against a woman without a computer
3 - News on an RIAA suit against a couple without a computer
And you get get all that just from reading the link descriptions.
I can respond to that with an enthusiastic YES, it does work.
We use it to authenticate our email and calendar users (from two different servers). I'm migrating us off our OLD Netware servers (damn lean budget years!) to Samba and am setting Samba to authenticate against it as well, finally giving our users a single userid and password for all our services.
OpenLDAP is lightweight (size and CPU-wise), robust, and reliable. It's also really easy to set up if you use the version included with your distribution. You can also replicate the server to give yourself good fault-tolerance on another piece of hardware.
RedHat has good online documentation on their website in the RHEL Reference Guide that should help explain things to you a bit.
The problem is that we can now see that the future is likely to be so starkly different from the present that it is difficult to create plot lines that are (a) easy enough to follow without entire chapters of background information and (b) emotionally connected to the issues of our own lives (required in order for the reader to empathize with the characters).
Imagine a world where we all have incredibly high bandwidth data connections wired directly into our brains. We can call up huge computational resources whenever we need to and have the entire world's library of knowledge at ready recall. It is difficult to explain such a world without being overly technical, and it is hard for us to identify with a character whose very thought-processes are likely to be incredibly different from our own. This character will live in a world that has very little in common with our own. And that one piece of technology won't exist in a vacuum -- there will be many other equally revolutionary changes coming up.
There's plenty of stories to set in the future -- it's just that if they do a good job of portraying how completely revolutionary technical change is becoming, they also tend to be little fun. In the end, don't we really look for fiction to be fun?
In 1994 finding tech support for any gadget (not just computers!) usually meant calling the tech support number for the company. Now a tech support number is the method of last resort. Online docs, newsgroups, and Google are the way to go.
In 1994 my vision was 20/450 in each eye. It's 20/15 now -- BETTER than "normal".
In 1994 cell phones were heavy, expensive, and worked in miniscule service areas. My unlimited long distance now means that I've discontinued long distance service on my landline entirely. I'm seldom inaccessible now -- unless I CHOOSE to be.
Money? I live 90% of my financial life electronically. In 1994 I still made trips to the bank to hand a paper paycheck to a teller. I spent ages trying to reconcile my checkbook to a once-a-month bank statement. Paying bills meant getting back to that stack in the corner when you had money in your account. Now I schedule my bills for payment as soon as the arrive -- set to deliver after payday whenever necessary. A list of every transaction I've made is ALWAYS available to me. I can keep my financial program reconciled to my bank's records DAILY. I usually carry under $10 in cash these days since my debit card works almost anywhere. Oh, remember PRICE TAGS? Little stickers with numbers on them that had to be read and manually punched in to a cash register. Very few stores use them now.
As for computers -- I have a LAPTOP that substitutes for a whole table top covered in computer junk. The house is wireless -- I get the information I want when I want it and where I want it. For that matter, my wife's wi-fi enabled Palm Pilot is about as powerful as my 1994 desktop -- which ran WINDOWS 3.1 (shudder) and cost 4 times as much. I still don't know what to do with that big table, though...
In 1994 I had to drive to the video store to rent a movie. Now, I usually just pick one off iControl. When I do choose a movie, it's a DVD which I can play on my TV or my laptop if I'm traveling. Same thing for music. I'm either buying songs from iTunes (and ONLY paying for the songs I want instead of buying a whole album with only two decent offerings on it) or I'm listening to Virgin Radio streaming live from LONDON (I'm in North Carolina).
Speaking of traveling, when I'm driving in an unfamiliar area I connect my PowerBook to my GPS. My position is indicated in realtime overlaying a map of the area. No more getting lost!
While I'm typing this to an international gathering of techies, I'm also chatting with my mom who is alone today via instant messaging.
Think it through a little more -- if you stand on a turntable, then as the it turns so will you. If you mount a treadmill on a turntable, then if the turntable turned, you would as well and would therefore continue forward on the treadmill without falling off.
The problem is that if you turn while on the treadmill, you are turning RELATIVE TO THE TREADMILL. If the turntable under the treadmill turns this WON'T compensate for your change of direction relative to the treadmill. End result: you fall off.
IE is the interface between the user and the Windows OS. It just happens to also act as a web browser. That's what they mean when they say it is integrated as part of Windows.
Now, taking the software that is responsible for interfacing with the OS and making it your default tool for interacting with the outside world was just plain stupid -- a marketing/legal department move to skirt the ruling that they couldn't bundle IE with Windows. Once done, however, almost any problem with IE becomes a root exploit. Surfing with IE makes this problem go from some risk to extreme risk. The only way to avoid this kind of escalation is to separate web broswer from OS interface: something MS doesn't want to do since then they are back to the bundling problem.
Slashdot Mirror
Generally, a "hardware firewire" simply means a device dedicated to working as a firewall whereas a "software firewall" means a program running on the computer to be protected. It does not imply that a hardware firewall does not have a software component.
I run both a hardware and a software firewall. If one is compromised the potential intruder finds yet another. My sensitive data is also all encrypted, so even if the intruder breaks the second one he/she isn't likely to get much of value.
Personally, I think that their 400ppm limit is arbitrary and has no strong scientific merit. Even so, I think you're wrong in your dirt comparison.
Many physical systems (and mathematical systems more generally) have transition points. The most basic that comes to mind is that of state transitions: water is solid at -1C but liquid at +1C. Anyone that has had water freeze inside a sealed container can tell you just how dramatic a couple of degrees can be.
Like I said, though, I'm nit-picking. Climate models are still to rough and complex to mark a single value of a single variable as a transition state, so I think they are still full of it.
By the way, I AM seriously concerned about climate change and do believe that human behavior is alerting global climate in dangerous ways. I just hate to see people trying to claim that the Point of No Return has been found and that we're going to have PANIC RIGHT NOW.
The original task was to find a computer comparable in power, price and SIZE to the Mac mini.
The HP a700y looks like a mid-sized tower to me with 2 5.25-inch drive bays and 3 3.5-inch drive bays. From the pictures it looks like it is 18 or 19 inches tall, 8 inches wide, and maybe 15 inches deep.
I don't think this meets the criteria of "close in size".
I'm slow on responding to this, so you may never see it, but it's worth a comment or two.
I think the major benefit of which you speak (cheap and plentiful hardware) was due to IBM, not Microsoft. IBM set the PC to be an open industry standard. By doing so they benefited from a huge range of third-party add-on cards. What they didn't realize was that other companies could compete against them on the base machines themselves. The move set the PC to be commodity hardware (pushing all other architectures into niches), but eventually bankrupted the IBM PC division.
Interestingly, since Mac OS X is a *nix-based system, cross-platform development is easier. It doesn't matter half as much what hardware you use in the *nix world. That's why my Mac has access to almost all the same software that my x86 Linux box does. Sometimes it's as easy as just recompiling the source code. I don't think that having a more even marketshare mix would therefore increase development costs in any significant way.
I actually agree with you on your last point. The OS *should* be moot, and eventually will be. The only reason it isn't already is Microsoft's monopoly status. MS is fighting against the tide.
I think they ARE treading water, but I also think you are right that Ballmer is attempting to position MS so that Windows/Office aren't the only options they have for making money. Companies which are dependent on a single product (especially tech companies) run the risk that new technologies will render them irrelevant. The PC demolished the mainframe business, for example. OSS is a real threat to closed source -- which traditionally is all MS has to offer.
Why I claim MS is simply treading water, however, comes down the fact that while MS is trying quite a few new projects to develop additional revenue streams, I don't see any of them really laying a foundation for big growth. The XBox is competitive, but doesn't dominate and is sold as a loss-leader (recouped on games sales). Sony is still a huge threat in consoles, so MS is still on unstable ground there. MSN: is it even profitable? I don't know, but I think it is marginal at best. Media Centers? So far, consumers seem to have no real interest in putting a computer in the entertainment center.
No, Ballmer's trying, but he isn't succeeding. MS still doesn't have any real direction or inspiration. Then again, it's a company that has gotten lethargic because of its monopoly revenue stream. Any tech company that doesn't stay hungry has become prey rather than predator.
It's not so different than any other vendor, so why call out Apple in particular over this one?
I was generating quotes on computers for a co-worker yesterday that recently lost her house to a fire. I checked Apple, Dell and HP. In EACH case, the $500 range computers were substantially over $1000 once I added all the components you would want for a primary home system.
In terms of the Mac mini, I wouldn't buy one for my main system, but I *would* consider one as my home file server or small web server. I wouldn't add a keyboard or mouse and could stick it under my router. I'd add some RAM, but still pay no more than $700 or so.
These are also great systems for someone looking to replace an older PC with a Mac to go with their iPod (which is the market I think Apple is aiming at here). Plug in your existing monitor, add a keyboard and mouse, and you are ready to run. I would strongly recommend more RAM, but if you are just using the web, email, and iTunes it will do the job as is. Not a bad choice as a replacement for you mom's malware-laden Windows ME machine.
I don't think anyone is suggesting that putting Apple in Microsoft's position would be a good thing. What WOULD be a good thing for everyone -- whether you use Windows, OS X, or Linux -- would be for Apple to have a larger marketshare than it does currently. Why? Because competition in the OS marketplace is GOOD. It would be a much healthier market if Microsoft only had, for example, 60% of the market.
Markets without a clearly dominant player tend to be more innovative, more dynamic, and more responsive to the needs of their customers.
Apple may or may not be "less evil" than Microsoft, but regardless of that, real competition is still a Good Thing.
The cell phone companies may be listening, but they don't care. Customers like you aren't worth anything to them. Competition between providers continues to force them to provide more and more airtime for less and less money. If all you want to do is talk on your phone they aren't going to make much profit off of you.
The folks that use data services, SMS, buy games and custom ringtones, and send pics (or even better: video clips!) are where the money is.
I have to disagree with you on that last point. Baazee took down the auction as soon as they became aware of it. They did the right thing from the very beginning as far as I can tell. There was no intent on the part of Baazee to distribute pornography.
Suppose one day someone slid some child pornography under your front door. Would you believe that you should be fined or arrested for possession of those materials? You certainly never planned on possessing those materials any more than Baazee planned on selling pornographic materials.
In situations like this there has to be intent in order for their to be wrongdoing.
It's illegal to compete with the Post Office?
Somebody better tell FedEx, UPS, DHL, Airborne Express...
I think the point being made was that no one living here prior to European colonization called the continents of the western hemisphere "America", so it struck that poster as odd that Native American should be considered the politically correct term.
Personally, (and my grandfather was a mix of Cherokee and Sioux) I prefer Native American over "descendents of aboriginal peoples of the western hemisphere", especially since the peoples of the Americas didn't actually have any word denoting the land masses now known as the Americas. Of course, for myself I usually just stick to "mutt" as I'm a major mash-up of Native and European heritage (two tribes and at least 4 European nations).
Well, Novell hasn't exactly given us any great reason to upgrade. I still have a bunch of Netware 4.11 servers which we plan to replace this coming year with Samba running on a single IBM eServer. Nothing wrong with the Netware 4.11 servers -- they do a great job, but the hardware is showing it's age. It gets harder to run old software on new hardware, so it's time to move on.
We'd consider continuing with Netware (migration would be a breeze), but the licensing is not attractive. We used to buy a few hundred perpetual client licenses per server. Now Novell wants the same sort of money for licenses that require yearly renewal.
We're a university research institute with about 350 employees. Yearly license fees eat up more money than we're willing to devote to them. With Samba 4 on the horizon, it just doesn't make any sense for us. Novell tried to get on the "yearly renewal" bandwagon, so we're migrating away from them entirely to nothing but OSS.
Not too late at all... though you may never notice that I FINALLY noticed your reply to my post.
/etc and /bin would generally still be safe.
Konquerer's extension to file system browser does make me nervous -- nervous enough not to use it for web browsing -- but not AS NERVOUS as IE because Linux has a better security model than Windows. IE basically has root access even if the user running it as a browser does not. As such, any vulnerability in IE is a root compromise. In the Linux world, a browser compromise would only give user-level access unless you are surfing the web as root. Joe User might get his home folder wiped, but
Boeing DOES do commercial launches for whoever wants to hire them and does it with their own facility launching from the middle of the ocean. Is this something like that what you had in mind?
It's true that any piece of software can have security issues, but IE will ALWAYS be the most dangerous browser you can run for one simple reason:
It is also your file system browser.
Integrating a web browser (i.e. the program that messes around with places of questionable authenticity) with your file system browser (the program that connects with your most sensitive files) is just insane from a security point of view.
What you fail to realize (RTFA!) is that the exclusion prevents Americans overseas from reaching the site as well.
:-)
According to the International Herald Tribune there are up to 4.1 million Americans living abroad. They aren't just rendering the site unreachable to non-Americans, but to a good number of voters. Of course, those voters can still visit johnkerry.com...
If there is one in your area, go to an Apple Store and lay your hands on one. They're really good about letting you try it out there. You can play with it enough to get a feel for whether or not it meets your speed needs. Take a CD with some big docs on them and open them up. Do a little surfing. Check your email. Play with iPhoto and iTunes.
I have a two year old PowerBook. It's beginning to feel a little sluggish to me here and there. Apps take a couple more seconds to open than I like, but I'm spoiled by having a dual 2Ghz G5 at work. EVERYTHING feels slow by comparison.
That said, the feature mix on my PowerBook is awesome in a very portable package. A few years ago I bought a dining room table for my computer at the time (a Wintel box) and it's peripherals. Now we have the PowerBook in "office nook" in the kitchen. The size and portability are huge plusses to me.
Now, if you really need a little more power, consider one of the new G5 iMacs. The housing is VESA-compliant, so you can wallmount it. Add an Airport card, wireless keyboard, and a wireless mouse if you want nothing but a power cord.
Given the trade-offs, I'd definitely make the same decision to purchase a PowerBook.
Now, as for comparing Wintel laptops to Powerbooks. I find that much of what makes a computer seem fast or slow is the smoothness with which the OS runs. The G4 chip is not going to perform as well as the newer P4 laptops. However, the OS runs VERY smoothly, so it FEELS more powerful than many Wintel laptops. Animations are silky. Expose provides incredibly slick window management when you have 20 things open in 12 different windows. Multimedia is smooth even when you are busy doing other things.
Like I said -- go try it! The Apple web site will point you to the store nearest you.
It doesn't just do it well, it does it AMAZINGLY well.
Those little white earbuds have a range of 20Hz to 20000Hz rather than the normal 50-15000 on most headphones for MP3 players. The sound quality will take your breath away! I have songs that I've played a zillion times on many different stereos, car systems, and mp3 players. When played on my iPod I can hear details I never caught before (like the tiny echoes from the room in which it was originally recorded). We play music all the time at home on our stereo, but it's my iPod I use when I really want to hear the real complexity and depth of my music collection.
So, yeah, it does it really well...
Google on:
riaa lawsuits "don't own a computer"
The first three links are:
1 - News on an RIAA lawsuit versus a man without a computer
2 - News on an RIAA suit against a woman without a computer
3 - News on an RIAA suit against a couple without a computer
And you get get all that just from reading the link descriptions.
I can respond to that with an enthusiastic YES, it does work.
We use it to authenticate our email and calendar users (from two different servers). I'm migrating us off our OLD Netware servers (damn lean budget years!) to Samba and am setting Samba to authenticate against it as well, finally giving our users a single userid and password for all our services.
OpenLDAP is lightweight (size and CPU-wise), robust, and reliable. It's also really easy to set up if you use the version included with your distribution. You can also replicate the server to give yourself good fault-tolerance on another piece of hardware.
RedHat has good online documentation on their website in the RHEL Reference Guide that should help explain things to you a bit.
I'd be all set FOREVER if I could only get 20 of these! I mean...
:-)
640 Processors should be enough for anyone!
The problem is that we can now see that the future is likely to be so starkly different from the present that it is difficult to create plot lines that are (a) easy enough to follow without entire chapters of background information and (b) emotionally connected to the issues of our own lives (required in order for the reader to empathize with the characters).
Imagine a world where we all have incredibly high bandwidth data connections wired directly into our brains. We can call up huge computational resources whenever we need to and have the entire world's library of knowledge at ready recall. It is difficult to explain such a world without being overly technical, and it is hard for us to identify with a character whose very thought-processes are likely to be incredibly different from our own. This character will live in a world that has very little in common with our own. And that one piece of technology won't exist in a vacuum -- there will be many other equally revolutionary changes coming up.
There's plenty of stories to set in the future -- it's just that if they do a good job of portraying how completely revolutionary technical change is becoming, they also tend to be little fun. In the end, don't we really look for fiction to be fun?
What's changed in 10 years?
In 1994 finding tech support for any gadget (not just computers!) usually meant calling the tech support number for the company. Now a tech support number is the method of last resort. Online docs, newsgroups, and Google are the way to go.
In 1994 my vision was 20/450 in each eye. It's 20/15 now -- BETTER than "normal".
In 1994 cell phones were heavy, expensive, and worked in miniscule service areas. My unlimited long distance now means that I've discontinued long distance service on my landline entirely. I'm seldom inaccessible now -- unless I CHOOSE to be.
Money? I live 90% of my financial life electronically. In 1994 I still made trips to the bank to hand a paper paycheck to a teller. I spent ages trying to reconcile my checkbook to a once-a-month bank statement. Paying bills meant getting back to that stack in the corner when you had money in your account. Now I schedule my bills for payment as soon as the arrive -- set to deliver after payday whenever necessary. A list of every transaction I've made is ALWAYS available to me. I can keep my financial program reconciled to my bank's records DAILY. I usually carry under $10 in cash these days since my debit card works almost anywhere. Oh, remember PRICE TAGS? Little stickers with numbers on them that had to be read and manually punched in to a cash register. Very few stores use them now.
As for computers -- I have a LAPTOP that substitutes for a whole table top covered in computer junk. The house is wireless -- I get the information I want when I want it and where I want it. For that matter, my wife's wi-fi enabled Palm Pilot is about as powerful as my 1994 desktop -- which ran WINDOWS 3.1 (shudder) and cost 4 times as much. I still don't know what to do with that big table, though...
In 1994 I had to drive to the video store to rent a movie. Now, I usually just pick one off iControl. When I do choose a movie, it's a DVD which I can play on my TV or my laptop if I'm traveling. Same thing for music. I'm either buying songs from iTunes (and ONLY paying for the songs I want instead of buying a whole album with only two decent offerings on it) or I'm listening to Virgin Radio streaming live from LONDON (I'm in North Carolina).
Speaking of traveling, when I'm driving in an unfamiliar area I connect my PowerBook to my GPS. My position is indicated in realtime overlaying a map of the area. No more getting lost!
While I'm typing this to an international gathering of techies, I'm also chatting with my mom who is alone today via instant messaging.
The changes since 94 have been HUGE.
Think it through a little more -- if you stand on a turntable, then as the it turns so will you. If you mount a treadmill on a turntable, then if the turntable turned, you would as well and would therefore continue forward on the treadmill without falling off.
The problem is that if you turn while on the treadmill, you are turning RELATIVE TO THE TREADMILL. If the turntable under the treadmill turns this WON'T compensate for your change of direction relative to the treadmill. End result: you fall off.
IE is the interface between the user and the Windows OS. It just happens to also act as a web browser. That's what they mean when they say it is integrated as part of Windows.
Now, taking the software that is responsible for interfacing with the OS and making it your default tool for interacting with the outside world was just plain stupid -- a marketing/legal department move to skirt the ruling that they couldn't bundle IE with Windows. Once done, however, almost any problem with IE becomes a root exploit. Surfing with IE makes this problem go from some risk to extreme risk. The only way to avoid this kind of escalation is to separate web broswer from OS interface: something MS doesn't want to do since then they are back to the bundling problem.