uh, because you don't know anything about Solaris? great, remind me not to hire you.
No...
I was making the point (in a somewhat circular manner, albeit), that it is human nature to recommend what one knows.
Students really are the future of IT. Scary, yes, but true. Most students do not have the money to run out and get a SPARC workstation to learn about an OS on. I would like to learn to support Macs, but again I haven't the money for the hardware.
I was making the point that, by doing this, Sun is locking out those future admins and will most likely be losing dollars to free OS'es like OpenBSD, that these students *do* know.
god forbid a new job should expect you to learn something, or even admit what you do and don't know.
Don't go there, buddy... I have no problem learning. That's why I run a BSD-variant instead of Windows (in other words, the stuff that trained monkeys can admin.) But it's human nature to recommend what one knows, and with this move, Sun has locked out that student market like me - the students who do the "Ooh, cool, a new OS to play with!" thing, learn to admin it by beating it up, reinstalling and recompiling and tinkering until that sucker is *functional*. The students who don't have a job, don't have a company behind them who will spring for the SPARC workstation and months of training classes.
Solaris still has alot to recomend it, particularly on the upper end, where x86 hardware just can't compete.
Guess what? OpenBSD supports SPARC, SPARC64, Alpha, HP300, Mac68k, Amiga, Sun3, MacPPC, VAX, Mvme68k, and of course the ubitiquous i386. If I don't know about Solaris because I couldn't run it on my old cheap Pentium box, and I don't *know* why it's better, and I *do* know OpenBSD and that it runs on my employer's platform of choice, damn right I'm going to recommend the known.
it is the mark of a very small mind to criticize something just because it's unfamiliar.
Look, I *want* to learn the joys of Solaris. I've wanted to ever since I got the OpenBSD server working, and was going to do that as soon as I got my paws on a copy and a spare computer. Now, Sun's locked that out for me. Guess I'll just have to learn Linux and the other BSDs and make the recommendations of said OS'es versus the one that I don't know because I can't know.
This is pitiful. First the recent article where they stopped giving away the Intel binaries, then this. Damn.
Don't know about the rest of you, but I don't have a spare three thousand dollars to get a SPARC-based processor to run Solaris on. However, I want to do Unix system administration, and I'm sure I'm gonna run across Solaris someday. Would be nice not to have to learn on the fly, so to speak. OpenBSD (what I'm using) is POSIX-compliant, but Solaris has a whole set of quirks all its own. Wish I'd gotten into this a few months earlier, when I *could* have downloaded Solaris for Intel chips and learned about it... even if it isn't the most current version.
Oh well. I'll learn Linux, I'll learn BSD, and I'll try to convince my future employers that Solaris is a proprietary piece of shit and that they're much better off with something of the BSD family. Thanks a lot, Sun.
Flash is an advanced scripting language at its heart. Seriously, people - DUH! Of course you can do virii with it - look at Java. Yes, it's supposed to run in a sandbox. Theory and practice are often light-years apart.
People can do some cool things with Flash, yes. They can also do many annoying things, and finally they can do some dangerous things, as evidenced by this article.
Yet another victory for Lynx users. When was the last time you heard of a terminal-based text-only browser bringing down a Unix system?;)
Time for the update, everyone. As predicted, there has been no email from MS. So tomorrow, I'll either email them again or call them.
On an excellent idea from one of the posters to this thread, Bodero, I'm moving the updates to my journal. There will be another update tomorrow - in the journal - for those of you interested, and daily updates until I get a straight answer out of Redmond. An OpenBSD-loving network admin with too much time on their hands is a dangerous thing for the folks at MS....:)
One more note. sroddy, the email's not valid because it's got slashdot spam armoring applied. For those of you wishing to contact me off of slashdot, the address is "sysadmin at mordac dot info". Or just post in the journal; that works too.
Now I've just got to hope that they don't send the flying monkeys out after me.:D
Don't forget to a) mod this up to ensure this guy is kept honest;), and b) keep checking for a progress report!
Well... I don't remember the exact moment I submitted it, but it was fairly close to ten EST. Update tomorrow by then, promise. I'll post it in this discussion, or like I said, I don't mind email.
I've just got to see that reply. I'm sure they'll refuse, but I can't decide if they'll offer to sell it for a trillion dollars, or if they'll just say you took the quote out of context. In any event, I'd love to see the return email.
Assuming I get one by then, it will be posted in this discussion tomorrow. If it isn't, then I'll post something to that effect, call them at their corporate headquarters the next day and demand to know why, then post *those* results. Watch this space....
And I agree with you one hundred percent - I can't decide between those two fates for the email either, assuming that they answer at all and don't just write me off as a rabid penguin-lovin' open-source freak. They'd be wrong, anyway: I'm a rabid *blowfish*-lovin' open-source freak (but I like penguins too!).:D
Anyway, I'm kinda interested in this one myself, so updates will be coming! And unless they attach Word's source with the email (better make sure my server doesn't have an attachment size limit...) I think I'll be replying to it.
and have you sign equally daunting NDAs before you actually get to see the code.
So? It would still be fascinating. I'm not doing this just out of open-source altruism, you know: it's just always been a dream of mine to see the code for a part of Office.
Plus... I want to see if I'll get a reply.:D
For anyone interested, here's the email I just sent them:
---
Salutations;
I am a user of Microsoft products, Windows and Office among others. I follow various pieces of Microsoft press with interest and intrigue, and I recently read Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates' interview with C|Net.
Referencing the section of Mr. Gates' comments referring to open source software:
"I don't know that anyone has ever asked for the source code for Word. If they did, we would give it to them."
Taking Mr. Gates' comment at face value, I hereby request a copy of the source code for Word. I would be fascinated to learn from such a program. It has long been an ambition of mine to see exactly what goes into the Office suite's programs.
I am completely serious in this query, and would appreciate a reply in the same vein.
Thank you,
(My real name, which I decline to place on Slashdot thank-you-very-much.;))
---
They said on the page that they would have someone get back to me within twenty-four hours using the email address I provided. Anyone interested in the reply can email me and request it.
I cannot believe this quote. What the FUCK was going through Gates's head?
I don't know that anyone has ever asked for the source code for Word. If they did, we would give it to them.
But you can *bet* that I'm going to try it. Lemme go find a MS email address and request it. They've gotten me seriously curious. (Yes, I'm really going to do this after I post this comment.)
And can I sue Gates for lying if they refuse to give it to me?
I wasn't around time before last; was everyone worrying that their nerdy news site would be toppled by the non-event of Y2K?;)
Happy New Year to everyone... Even the trolls. Me, I'm on EST. Ain't gonna be there for four more hours. Maybe I'll spend the time on my New Year's resolutions.:D
When I used Red Hat, Gnome was my desktop of choice... KDE wasn't bad, no, but Gnome was so much cleaner. However, KDE's office suite did beat the alternative in Gnome, pico,:D, hollow.
It's nice to see that they're developing Gnome's own competitive options. I may have to try it out again, though IceWM on OpenBSD beats both KDE and Gnome hollow, in my estimation.
...but, as always, your mileage may vary. A watt of power is, while not on class with many ham radios, even, still quite a bit.
Essentially what I'm saying is, you turn up the power on this thing, you don't wanna wear it as a hat. Not that you wanted to do it before, but now you *really* don't want to.
Remember, Linksys is not turning down the power just to spite the geeks out there. I imagine it could easily be a safety issue. Either that, or they had to do it to meet the FCC interference standards. If that's the case, you could have problems with devices that operate in that section of spectrum - I seem to remember something about wireless phone (NOT cellular, *wireless*, as in a base unit, then a detachable handset) working there.
Also, just as a totally useless aside, looking at my handy-dandy (three or so years old) frequency chart I have here, I find it interesting that that portion of spectrum used to be for amateur radio operators. Co-located, perhaps, or did they just take it away from the amateurs altogether?
...that it isn't fashionable - or geeky - or (mostly) smart - to thumb one's nose at security issues. But frankly... I'm not that worried about 802.11b's encryption problems. Why? I use 802.11b over my home network, totally unencrypted. I live on a dead-end court, so "war drivers" aren't an issue, especially since the access point I'm using has an effective range that makes me turn the 'top the right way to get reception when I'm on the other side of the house (not centered, because of layout issues).
Yes, I know, perhaps it's stupid of me, and I'm planning to set up some kind of security. But for many users out there - the people who wanna be able to check their email from the kitchen - weak security is just not a problem. Just so long as the spooks don't start wanting wireless access...:D
...as they don't use Embedded XP in stuff like pacemakers.
Now that would give a whole new meaning to Blue Screen of Death. (Yes, I ripped that off someone else whose name I can't remember.:D)
Seriously... the problem that *I* see with using embedded Windows is the proprietary issues. With *nix, all you do is grab yourself a kernel at no charge, hire a C programmer, strip it down, and flash it into memory. Lovely, right?
But Windows... I don't see MS making the source to XP open so that people can make themselves good, small versions to embed into devices. Do you?
Think about it, people. We all know that MS keeps their coders in a Dark Place and gives them anti-other-philosophy-and-OS training. Otherwise, they'd all realize there's gotta be something better out there than hacking on shitty API's and bug-ridden code...
Then they have to have these brainwashed programmers develop for Linux. A clean OS, where they can get at *ALL* the code, where the system doesn't crash every five seconds and the OS doesn't use 99.9999% of available memory, making your program run in about five kilobytes.
Without programmers, they are nothing! They will all defect, and MS will be no more! YEAH, BABY, YEAH! DO IT, JUSTICE!
Just because you understand what a filter does, and why you attach it to a phone and not the dsl modem, you can't expect everyone to know that.
Yea, I can.:D But then and again, I'm the one that thinks there should be a minimum IQ test to use a computer - if you can't understand something that simple, you shouldn't be using it. I'm not talking you have to be a rocket scientist here; just, a little more learning than "Okay, so I turn on this widget and click here, and everything's okay," would be nice.
Many times you need to put a filter on the phone lines to prevent interference between the low-freq signal (POTS) and high (High Speed Data).
Duhhhh... But my point was that it's pitiful they have to *ask* that question. Not that it's not a valid one. Fairly basic, wouldn't you think, that putting a filter on the signal going to the modem is a 'Bad Thing' (tm)?
Personally, I like my setup. Dropped two lines off of the actual phone line, where it comes into the house, and built a little widget, then hooked the filter directly into the one line. That one then goes to all the phones. Then, the unfiltered one goes across to my modem.
And as a side benefit, it impresses the techs that end up coming out here when the modem or line fucks up; they're used to people cramming the modem under the bed, as one told me.;)
Sure they do [google.com]. It's not hard [google.com].
Did I say it was hard? No. But I still stand by the comment that they don't have the expertise.
Again, at Verizon, once you get into tech support, they have three menus. "If you're having trouble getting your connection set up, press one. If you're having trouble with your email, press two. For any other problems, press three." These people can't even set up an account in Outlook or Messenger. What makes you think they'll be able to stagger through the signup process for wherever and get their external settings working?
Running SMTP in your house isn't the only way to have email.
Buddy, I feel your pain. I'm with Verizon and they give you *four* 10-meg mailboxes, special 'news services', a 'portal'... And yet, they're too cheap to give me one single static IP. I can't even get it by paying extra, regardless of the propagandic lies on their site.
But could they do that? Nah. I'm running my own mail server, but they're trying to become the AOHell of broadband. Get this - when you call to report a service outage, they ask if you put a *filter* on the *DSL MODEM*!
Face it... most people haven't the technical expertise to go out and hunt for their own email server, or run one of their own (and yes, with a few nasty tricks with some dyndns services, I am indeed running one despite their lack of an IP). More's the pity that they don't, I agree...
But as long as the geeks are outnumbered by the morons, that's the way it's gonna be, sad to say.
...Don't use Winblows, use OpenBSD. All your security worries will just vanish into the night.:D
Re:Prettier outside, same junk inside
on
Concept PC 2001
·
· Score: 1
Still to this day, upgrading a hard drive or a graphics card is an unnecesarily obfuscated process, requiring the PC guts to be cracked open and laid out on the kitchen table.
The kitchen table?! You use a freakin' kitchen table?!
Sheeeeeesh. I do so much crap with that stuff that I just rip it open right on the floor.:D Static straps are for wussies, and I've never fried a component yet.
As for simple...to be serious, it doesn't get much simpler. Take off cover, remove old hard drive, insert new, plug in power and IDE cables. Close cover, plug everything back in, boot.
Stopping on (planet began with R, I think this is where Troy and Riker spent a weekend, or something like that?). Sort of an underground brothel/strip club
Risa. The terraformed pleasure planet with many many scantily dressed native gals.
Yea, Riker's kind of place. Though I can't quite see it as Troi's.:)
Slashdot Mirror
First post!
No...
I was making the point (in a somewhat circular manner, albeit), that it is human nature to recommend what one knows.
Students really are the future of IT. Scary, yes, but true. Most students do not have the money to run out and get a SPARC workstation to learn about an OS on. I would like to learn to support Macs, but again I haven't the money for the hardware.
I was making the point that, by doing this, Sun is locking out those future admins and will most likely be losing dollars to free OS'es like OpenBSD, that these students *do* know.
god forbid a new job should expect you to learn something, or even admit what you do and don't know.
Don't go there, buddy... I have no problem learning. That's why I run a BSD-variant instead of Windows (in other words, the stuff that trained monkeys can admin.) But it's human nature to recommend what one knows, and with this move, Sun has locked out that student market like me - the students who do the "Ooh, cool, a new OS to play with!" thing, learn to admin it by beating it up, reinstalling and recompiling and tinkering until that sucker is *functional*. The students who don't have a job, don't have a company behind them who will spring for the SPARC workstation and months of training classes.
Solaris still has alot to recomend it, particularly on the upper end, where x86 hardware just can't compete.
Guess what? OpenBSD supports SPARC, SPARC64, Alpha, HP300, Mac68k, Amiga, Sun3, MacPPC, VAX, Mvme68k, and of course the ubitiquous i386. If I don't know about Solaris because I couldn't run it on my old cheap Pentium box, and I don't *know* why it's better, and I *do* know OpenBSD and that it runs on my employer's platform of choice, damn right I'm going to recommend the known.
it is the mark of a very small mind to criticize something just because it's unfamiliar.
Look, I *want* to learn the joys of Solaris. I've wanted to ever since I got the OpenBSD server working, and was going to do that as soon as I got my paws on a copy and a spare computer. Now, Sun's locked that out for me. Guess I'll just have to learn Linux and the other BSDs and make the recommendations of said OS'es versus the one that I don't know because I can't know.
This is pitiful. First the recent article where they stopped giving away the Intel binaries, then this. Damn.
Don't know about the rest of you, but I don't have a spare three thousand dollars to get a SPARC-based processor to run Solaris on. However, I want to do Unix system administration, and I'm sure I'm gonna run across Solaris someday. Would be nice not to have to learn on the fly, so to speak. OpenBSD (what I'm using) is POSIX-compliant, but Solaris has a whole set of quirks all its own. Wish I'd gotten into this a few months earlier, when I *could* have downloaded Solaris for Intel chips and learned about it... even if it isn't the most current version.
Oh well. I'll learn Linux, I'll learn BSD, and I'll try to convince my future employers that Solaris is a proprietary piece of shit and that they're much better off with something of the BSD family. Thanks a lot, Sun.
People can do some cool things with Flash, yes. They can also do many annoying things, and finally they can do some dangerous things, as evidenced by this article.
Yet another victory for Lynx users. When was the last time you heard of a terminal-based text-only browser bringing down a Unix system? ;)
On an excellent idea from one of the posters to this thread, Bodero, I'm moving the updates to my journal. There will be another update tomorrow - in the journal - for those of you interested, and daily updates until I get a straight answer out of Redmond. An OpenBSD-loving network admin with too much time on their hands is a dangerous thing for the folks at MS.... :)
One more note. sroddy, the email's not valid because it's got slashdot spam armoring applied. For those of you wishing to contact me off of slashdot, the address is "sysadmin at mordac dot info". Or just post in the journal; that works too.
Now I've just got to hope that they don't send the flying monkeys out after me. :D
Well... I don't remember the exact moment I submitted it, but it was fairly close to ten EST. Update tomorrow by then, promise. I'll post it in this discussion, or like I said, I don't mind email.
I've just got to see that reply. I'm sure they'll refuse, but I can't decide if they'll offer to sell it for a trillion dollars, or if they'll just say you took the quote out of context. In any event, I'd love to see the return email.
Assuming I get one by then, it will be posted in this discussion tomorrow. If it isn't, then I'll post something to that effect, call them at their corporate headquarters the next day and demand to know why, then post *those* results. Watch this space....
And I agree with you one hundred percent - I can't decide between those two fates for the email either, assuming that they answer at all and don't just write me off as a rabid penguin-lovin' open-source freak. They'd be wrong, anyway: I'm a rabid *blowfish*-lovin' open-source freak (but I like penguins too!). :D
Anyway, I'm kinda interested in this one myself, so updates will be coming! And unless they attach Word's source with the email (better make sure my server doesn't have an attachment size limit...) I think I'll be replying to it.
They said "give", didn't they?
and have you sign equally daunting NDAs before you actually get to see the code.
So? It would still be fascinating. I'm not doing this just out of open-source altruism, you know: it's just always been a dream of mine to see the code for a part of Office.
Plus... I want to see if I'll get a reply. :D
For anyone interested, here's the email I just sent them:
---
Salutations;
I am a user of Microsoft products, Windows and Office among others. I follow various pieces of Microsoft press with interest and intrigue, and I recently read Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates' interview with C|Net.
Referencing the section of Mr. Gates' comments referring to open source software:
"I don't know that anyone has ever asked for the source code for Word. If they did, we would give it to them."
Taking Mr. Gates' comment at face value, I hereby request a copy of the source code for Word. I would be fascinated to learn from such a program. It has long been an ambition of mine to see exactly what goes into the Office suite's programs.
I am completely serious in this query, and would appreciate a reply in the same vein.
Thank you,
(My real name, which I decline to place on Slashdot thank-you-very-much. ;))
---
They said on the page that they would have someone get back to me within twenty-four hours using the email address I provided. Anyone interested in the reply can email me and request it.
I don't know that anyone has ever asked for the source code for Word. If they did, we would give it to them.
But you can *bet* that I'm going to try it. Lemme go find a MS email address and request it. They've gotten me seriously curious. (Yes, I'm really going to do this after I post this comment.)
And can I sue Gates for lying if they refuse to give it to me?
Hmm...
Glaring omissions?
Guess yer talking about Microsoft. We all know how much *THEY* innovate!
:D
I wasn't around time before last; was everyone worrying that their nerdy news site would be toppled by the non-event of Y2K? ;)
Happy New Year to everyone... Even the trolls. Me, I'm on EST. Ain't gonna be there for four more hours. Maybe I'll spend the time on my New Year's resolutions. :D
It's nice to see that they're developing Gnome's own competitive options. I may have to try it out again, though IceWM on OpenBSD beats both KDE and Gnome hollow, in my estimation.
Essentially what I'm saying is, you turn up the power on this thing, you don't wanna wear it as a hat. Not that you wanted to do it before, but now you *really* don't want to.
Remember, Linksys is not turning down the power just to spite the geeks out there. I imagine it could easily be a safety issue. Either that, or they had to do it to meet the FCC interference standards. If that's the case, you could have problems with devices that operate in that section of spectrum - I seem to remember something about wireless phone (NOT cellular, *wireless*, as in a base unit, then a detachable handset) working there.
Also, just as a totally useless aside, looking at my handy-dandy (three or so years old) frequency chart I have here, I find it interesting that that portion of spectrum used to be for amateur radio operators. Co-located, perhaps, or did they just take it away from the amateurs altogether?
...not even Star Trek has hologram generators the size of a pen. }}}:-) What? What, you say? They're not that kind of hologram? Well, shit. :D
Yes, I know, perhaps it's stupid of me, and I'm planning to set up some kind of security. But for many users out there - the people who wanna be able to check their email from the kitchen - weak security is just not a problem. Just so long as the spooks don't start wanting wireless access... :D
Uhh... Can you explain just *one* thingy to me, please?
Why is the average person going to be pointing their browsers to "fuckgeneralmotors.com"? :D
Now an X-Files or Star Trek one... That would be the height of human endeavour... But I probably shouldn't get into that. :D
Now that would give a whole new meaning to Blue Screen of Death. (Yes, I ripped that off someone else whose name I can't remember. :D)
Seriously... the problem that *I* see with using embedded Windows is the proprietary issues. With *nix, all you do is grab yourself a kernel at no charge, hire a C programmer, strip it down, and flash it into memory. Lovely, right?
But Windows... I don't see MS making the source to XP open so that people can make themselves good, small versions to embed into devices. Do you?
Then they have to have these brainwashed programmers develop for Linux. A clean OS, where they can get at *ALL* the code, where the system doesn't crash every five seconds and the OS doesn't use 99.9999% of available memory, making your program run in about five kilobytes.
Without programmers, they are nothing! They will all defect, and MS will be no more! YEAH, BABY, YEAH! DO IT, JUSTICE!
Yea, I can. :D But then and again, I'm the one that thinks there should be a minimum IQ test to use a computer - if you can't understand something that simple, you shouldn't be using it. I'm not talking you have to be a rocket scientist here; just, a little more learning than "Okay, so I turn on this widget and click here, and everything's okay," would be nice.
Duhhhh... But my point was that it's pitiful they have to *ask* that question. Not that it's not a valid one. Fairly basic, wouldn't you think, that putting a filter on the signal going to the modem is a 'Bad Thing' (tm)?
Personally, I like my setup. Dropped two lines off of the actual phone line, where it comes into the house, and built a little widget, then hooked the filter directly into the one line. That one then goes to all the phones. Then, the unfiltered one goes across to my modem.
And as a side benefit, it impresses the techs that end up coming out here when the modem or line fucks up; they're used to people cramming the modem under the bed, as one told me. ;)
Did I say it was hard? No. But I still stand by the comment that they don't have the expertise.
Again, at Verizon, once you get into tech support, they have three menus. "If you're having trouble getting your connection set up, press one. If you're having trouble with your email, press two. For any other problems, press three." These people can't even set up an account in Outlook or Messenger. What makes you think they'll be able to stagger through the signup process for wherever and get their external settings working?
Running SMTP in your house isn't the only way to have email.
No, it isn't. It's just the *BEST* way. :D
Buddy, I feel your pain. I'm with Verizon and they give you *four* 10-meg mailboxes, special 'news services', a 'portal'... And yet, they're too cheap to give me one single static IP. I can't even get it by paying extra, regardless of the propagandic lies on their site.
But could they do that? Nah. I'm running my own mail server, but they're trying to become the AOHell of broadband. Get this - when you call to report a service outage, they ask if you put a *filter* on the *DSL MODEM*!
Face it... most people haven't the technical expertise to go out and hunt for their own email server, or run one of their own (and yes, with a few nasty tricks with some dyndns services, I am indeed running one despite their lack of an IP). More's the pity that they don't, I agree...
But as long as the geeks are outnumbered by the morons, that's the way it's gonna be, sad to say.
...Don't use Winblows, use OpenBSD. All your security worries will just vanish into the night. :D
The kitchen table?! You use a freakin' kitchen table?!
Sheeeeeesh. I do so much crap with that stuff that I just rip it open right on the floor. :D Static straps are for wussies, and I've never fried a component yet.
As for simple...to be serious, it doesn't get much simpler. Take off cover, remove old hard drive, insert new, plug in power and IDE cables. Close cover, plug everything back in, boot.
Stopping on (planet began with R, I think this is where Troy and Riker spent a weekend, or something like that?). Sort of an underground brothel/strip club
:)
Risa. The terraformed pleasure planet with many many scantily dressed native gals.
Yea, Riker's kind of place. Though I can't quite see it as Troi's.