With ext3, you can specify '-o data=journal'. This forces journaling of data. If you're using ext3fs (or most other general purpose FSs) you should also try using '-o noatime' -- It disables updating access times, which could cause bit fatigue for the inodes of heavily used files.
You'd still have to mount it in synchronous mode so the kernel doesn't do any write caching. External journals only go so far. Journals guarantee filesystem consistency, but not data consistency.
First of all, you don't 'agree to' the GPL, you invoke it in order to have the right to redistribute your copy. You don't have to agree to anything to use GPL. Once you have your copies, you can do anything that copyright allows you to.
Just like you don't have to agree to the laws of the road every time you start (or buy) a car, you don't have to agree to follow copyright when you're just using or instaling GPL software. All that displaying the GPL on install does is tell you what your extended rights are and how you can access them. If you don't agree to the GPL then either get permission for non-GPL distribution from the authors, or don't do anything illegal with it (i.e. don't break copyright and you'll be fine).
If anything, the continue button should just say...
Gee, thanks!
Nothing more is needed. and 'I agree' buttons just perpetuate the rather questionable legitimacy of proprietary 'click-through' pages that purport to give the authors the rights to your first-born and conjugal rights to your partner if you install the software that you've just bought for $495.
Microsoft's position with the EU was essentially "You can't use anti-monopoly laws on us, we're the monopoly, and if you mess with us, your economy will be destroyed". (my paraphrase of their attitude).
The EU replied, "yes, we know that you're a monopoly, and that's why we're using anti-monopoly laws against you.... Deal with it!". The fact that many EU governments are toying rather seriously with Open Source options didn't really help MSs position, because if a european release delay causes many entities to leave the MS fold, then they could loose their dominant position. Far better to make a few minor changes than to butt heads and find Vista illegal in Europe until they obey both anti-trust rulings (and they're really fighting tooth and nail on the documentation ruling).
Nobody is denying that MS convinced Baystar to invest money in SCO. The story is that MS convinced baystar to invest with vague indications that their ass would be covered then backed out and walked away when the money was in. If MS could have denied ever talking Baystar into their investment, they have every reason to do so. Instead they simply emphasize baystar's claim that they never made any solid promise in their convincing and they never covered Baystar's ass.
When listening to diplomats (and PR people are the corporate version of diplomats), you must pay as much attention to what unexpectantly isn't said as what is.
MS's denials remind me of the above quote from a French diplomat defending that country's nuclear tests about a decade ago.
In some ways, I'd consider MS's actions WRT Baystar even worse than just bankrolling the investment -- They convinced Baystar that they'd be backing up the investment then, once baystar committed their money, MS goes -- Oops! just kidding you. We really can't cover your back for you!.
It should also be noted that the same consultant who charged SCO for arranging the Baystar 'investment' also took a similar cut for MS's supposed license buy and for the same reason -- that it was an infusion of cash (as oppopsed to a legitimate license upgrade).
Even though RieserFS is under GPL, he still lead(s) the team that has done most of the development. Having him in jail is, at the very least, going to be somewhat disruptive to the current development of ReiserFS, and at worst, going to put a really big kink in the future development and stability of the filesystem.
Happily, the GPL-ness of the code means that further development can't be fataly pinned by lawyers and accountants for his estate (should he be executed), but to say that the GPL makes him irrelevant is also a falacy.
Does it? Here's the Cliff Notes version. ReiserFS is released under GPL. The "hit by a bus" fallacy has been debunked.
The GPL3 does not, as I understand it require that you release your personal (or company) private key.
It simply requires that you provide the user with the ability to use/create a functional key which provides identical functionality.
That way you can't end up with a situation where, say, Microsoft, uses their market clout to make hardware manufacturers release 'secure' boxes which only boot from Microsoft keys, and then they release a Linux kernel signed by Microsoft.... Now you have the source code to the Microsoft Linux kernel, but no 'comodity' box that will boot your recompiled kernel because they all require Microsoft's key.
Now, Microsoft (and Linus) can keep their private key private -- they just have to provide you with a key (any key) that will boot your box... and They just can't punish you for using your own kernel (as long as it provides identical functionality).
We've got about 0.6% 'nasty' usage.. It only sounds nasty if you don't average it out per employee. From TFA:
A one-week study by the department's Inspector General found, however, that a lot of abuse is going on. Among the study's findings:
This activity accounted for more than 24 hours of Internet use during the sample period, which did not include a review of e-mail or other means of transferring prohibited material.
More than 1 million log entries were discovered indicating 7,763 Department computer users spent 2,004-plus hours accessing game and auction sites. Extrapolated over the year, that could account for 100,000 lost work hours. Put another way, this would equal 50 full-time employees doing nothing but surfing online game and auction sites.
"7,763 Department computer users spent 2,004 plus hours accessing game and auction sites." That's 15.5 minutes per average user over the one week study. This probably includes coffee breaks and lunchtimes. -- but when you multiply that by thousands of users, you can get scarey numbers....
E.G. The United states spends 1million hours per year blinking -- Just think how much time we could save if we could outlaw blinking.... (this stat is made up, but it gives you the idea of what you can get if you multiply by 300million citizens).
Well, I've now (just recently) seen two users with versions of this problem. neither of them is computer savy.. They managed to get the system up with only the one administrator account, (they may have also created NON-admin accounts), and when a second admin account was added the first became unavailable for login.
The one fix I was able to find was to disable the fat login screen. In my googles, I wasn't able to find the (emminently obvious -- ahem) registry entry that would fix the problem, and the most sane other choice I found was to go to the old-style screen (which gave my boss flashbacks) so I was left reformating the system.
My boss at work opened up his store, with the till being run by a machine that he brought from home -- Installed (as usual) with only the (default) administrator user.
He then asked me to create a new user so that I could put some data in a safe, place, but i made the mistake of making my new user an administrator -- as soon as I did this, it became impossible to log in as the old administrator using the standard XP login screen. It took me some googling to figure out what had happened, but once I understood what was wrong, and even though the fix would have been almost trivial, if I had the source code (turn off the check for a second user), the only available fix for me (given that my boss hates the old NT-4 login screen) was to reformat the drive and re-install the entire OS.
A more trivial 'Blow me up if I get shot' kind of dead man switch is pretty easy to build and would require little help from the Slashdot crowd. What I'm seeing is a request for a device that can call for help if I'm dead (or, preferrably, even incapacitated). That's not the kind of thing that a suicide bomber type would need.
Just because something can be used for evil doesn't mean that it should never be made --- Just about everything ever made has some kind of an evil use -- e.g. paper cutters and 9/11. The best you can look at is immediate use and probable general use. If those come out evil then, yes, I agree that you should walk away. I don't see that here.
The Solaris 1 name wasn't just a marketing exercise. It was an intermediate version with both SVR4 and BSD pieces so that SunOS users could get used to the fact that Sun was moving over to SVR4 before the full-fledged flip-over. That way, people wouldn't be caught completely flat-footed by the final change-over.
There was the marshall plan in German, but also the necessity of an almost complete rebuild of the nation after the disasterous bombings of WWII. This meant that most of the industrial capacity that existed in germany after WWII was modernized fresh builds with all of the lessons learned during the course of the war. Thus it was that, after WWII, you had completely modernized factories and well-designed infrastructure competing against often aging and (re)converted factories in North America and the parts of europe that hadn't been as badly trashed by WWII.
By the time the other countries had caught up with the modernization of freshly rebuilt German factories, Germany had a heavy PR advantage in being known for high quality wares, which served them for a few decades more.
As far as calling the loss of a large proportion of your younger male population (i.e. anybody of soldier age), and the destruction of entire cities as leaving you better off.... Does this mean that you're advocating letting Al Quada (or US agents masquerading as them) blow up random US cities with 'rogue' nukes? It should, in your theory, have a very similar effect.
That 1% failure rate would be fine for beta testing, or games. WGA, however, was presented to users as a security fix -- something to improve the stability and security of their systems. What it does instead, is give MS an excuse to wilfully degrade your system. If you've paid $400 for a piece of software having the manufacturer wilfully degrade it for any reason is unacceptable.
Microsoft is free to use this on people who realize that they're testing dangerous software, but hoisting destructive beta software on users as a freaking improvement is an abomination.
In the software world, 137 problems on say 5,000 cases of average people using your brand new product is "nearly flawless." I would guess 50% are user error, 42% false positives and 8% other.
This isn't a big problem for the 2% of the public (i.e. most of slashdot) who know better than to use WMP.
Nor is it a problem for the 5% of the public who will never upgrade their machine.
But most of the other 92% of the public isn't gonna find out about their problems for a year or two. By that time, they'll have all their music locked up in a Windows-only format, and it'll be illegal for them to listen to it with, say, another operating system. (DMCA rules!).
One of the strangest anomalys of Global warming is that Europe's warm 'Mediterranean' climate is a result of the Gulf Stream, and the position of the Gulf Stream is a side effect of fresh water flows off of the arctic ice cap. If the arctic ice cap continues to shrink, the Gulf Stream could disapper, and so...
Global Warming could cause Europe to freeze over.
Talk about a joke. If they were really interested in fighting child porn, they would allocate some reasonable resources to the process. There's already more child porn out there that law enforcement has the resources to prosecute. If appropriate resources were available to the fight, there would be way less child porn out there.
There is lots of information available, and where there is reasonable cause to believe that a pornography distributer is using an ISP, I'm sure that there are lots of laws that would make it possible to require an ISP to maintain the specific records necessary to mount a proper prosecution.
I presume that you're running a network anyways, so you really don't need to run any extra cat-5.
Just stick the main servers next to the internet ingress point, and cascade the switches appropriately.
Gigabit would be nice for the backbone, but it's far from an absolute necessity. People have run diskless machines on 10baseT for years. It's far better than nothing.
Get one (or two) nice machines -- relatively new (a year or two old should be fine), but load it up with a few gigabytes of RAM.
For the old machines that don't have the oomph to run Linux on their own, load them up with Terminal servers software and have them do most of their work from the central servers. -- then hook yourself up with a 100Megabit network and let fly. The connection to the central server could be a gigabit link with a 100Megabit fan out to get the most of your network bandwith.
Remember that -- for most of the stuff that students do, the vast majority of their time the computer is going to be doing make-work on their screen while waiting for them to type. All you really need is enough RAM that a student's active processes don't get swapped out to disk. That city government in Florida is a pretty good case study on this kind of setup.
The first thing that DHS has to do before leading the country in a cyber war is to clean up it's own house. Last time I heard they were still getting a d or D- for their cyber security.
Putting somebody who lobbies for various security companies in charge of designing the security used by DHS creates an immediate conflict of interest. How are we going to know that he's not pushing a given solution because it would keep his (former?) handlers happy as opposed to because it's a good thing. Furthermore, a lobbyist is good at getting other people to do (sometimes stupid) things that you want them to do -- This doesn't necessarily (or even usually) mean that this lobbyist is actually especially knowledgable about the field that (s)he is promoting in. Lobbyists only need to know enough information to sway their target.
It's a little bit fuzzy when you consider that kernels can include the modules that can be either loaded or compiled into it depending on the builder's preferences. I'd bet that a lot of 'kernel' improvements are mostly improvements of modules -- either built in or included. (I haven't read the kernel mailing list for a while now).
In Vancouver, hookers call tricks dates... If you're talking to a hooker her, "Would you like a date!" pretty much means, "buck up and I'll spread my legs".
I guess that the analogy with Microsoft isn't that bad...
Most of what's pretty about her is very superficial.
You buck up a load of money before you really know what you're getting. She immediately goes down on you, and when that's done, you know that your're gonna be badly f*cked.
Slashdot Mirror
Just like you don't have to agree to the laws of the road every time you start (or buy) a car, you don't have to agree to follow copyright when you're just using or instaling GPL software. All that displaying the GPL on install does is tell you what your extended rights are and how you can access them. If you don't agree to the GPL then either get permission for non-GPL distribution from the authors, or don't do anything illegal with it (i.e. don't break copyright and you'll be fine).
If anything, the continue button should just say...
Gee, thanks!
Nothing more is needed. and 'I agree' buttons just perpetuate the rather questionable legitimacy of proprietary 'click-through' pages that purport to give the authors the rights to your first-born and conjugal rights to your partner if you install the software that you've just bought for $495.
The EU replied, "yes, we know that you're a monopoly, and that's why we're using anti-monopoly laws against you
When listening to diplomats (and PR people are the corporate version of diplomats), you must pay as much attention to what unexpectantly isn't said as what is.
In some ways, I'd consider MS's actions WRT Baystar even worse than just bankrolling the investment -- They convinced Baystar that they'd be backing up the investment then, once baystar committed their money, MS goes -- Oops! just kidding you. We really can't cover your back for you!.
It should also be noted that the same consultant who charged SCO for arranging the Baystar 'investment' also took a similar cut for MS's supposed license buy and for the same reason -- that it was an infusion of cash (as oppopsed to a legitimate license upgrade).
Happily, the GPL-ness of the code means that further development can't be fataly pinned by lawyers and accountants for his estate (should he be executed), but to say that the GPL makes him irrelevant is also a falacy.
It simply requires that you provide the user with the ability to use/create a functional key which provides identical functionality.
That way you can't end up with a situation where, say, Microsoft, uses their market clout to make hardware manufacturers release 'secure' boxes which only boot from Microsoft keys, and then they release a Linux kernel signed by Microsoft.... Now you have the source code to the Microsoft Linux kernel, but no 'comodity' box that will boot your recompiled kernel because they all require Microsoft's key.
Now, Microsoft (and Linus) can keep their private key private -- they just have to provide you with a key (any key) that will boot your box ... and They just can't punish you for using your own kernel (as long as it provides identical functionality).
E.G. The United states spends 1million hours per year blinking -- Just think how much time we could save if we could outlaw blinking
The one fix I was able to find was to disable the fat login screen. In my googles, I wasn't able to find the (emminently obvious -- ahem) registry entry that would fix the problem, and the most sane other choice I found was to go to the old-style screen (which gave my boss flashbacks) so I was left reformating the system.
He then asked me to create a new user so that I could put some data in a safe, place, but i made the mistake of making my new user an administrator -- as soon as I did this, it became impossible to log in as the old administrator using the standard XP login screen. It took me some googling to figure out what had happened, but once I understood what was wrong, and even though the fix would have been almost trivial, if I had the source code (turn off the check for a second user), the only available fix for me (given that my boss hates the old NT-4 login screen) was to reformat the drive and re-install the entire OS.
Just because something can be used for evil doesn't mean that it should never be made --- Just about everything ever made has some kind of an evil use -- e.g. paper cutters and 9/11. The best you can look at is immediate use and probable general use. If those come out evil then, yes, I agree that you should walk away. I don't see that here.
The Solaris 1 name wasn't just a marketing exercise. It was an intermediate version with both SVR4 and BSD pieces so that SunOS users could get used to the fact that Sun was moving over to SVR4 before the full-fledged flip-over. That way, people wouldn't be caught completely flat-footed by the final change-over.
By the time the other countries had caught up with the modernization of freshly rebuilt German factories, Germany had a heavy PR advantage in being known for high quality wares, which served them for a few decades more.
As far as calling the loss of a large proportion of your younger male population (i.e. anybody of soldier age), and the destruction of entire cities as leaving you better off .... Does this mean that you're advocating letting Al Quada (or US agents masquerading as them) blow up random US cities with 'rogue' nukes? It should, in your theory, have a very similar effect.
It's too bad that SONY's recall program doesn't include free return postage...
Microsoft is free to use this on people who realize that they're testing dangerous software, but hoisting destructive beta software on users as a freaking improvement is an abomination.
Nor is it a problem for the 5% of the public who will never upgrade their machine.
But most of the other 92% of the public isn't gonna find out about their problems for a year or two. By that time, they'll have all their music locked up in a Windows-only format, and it'll be illegal for them to listen to it with, say, another operating system. (DMCA rules!).
Global Warming could cause Europe to freeze over.
Say goodbye to warm Riviera Summers.
There is lots of information available, and where there is reasonable cause to believe that a pornography distributer is using an ISP, I'm sure that there are lots of laws that would make it possible to require an ISP to maintain the specific records necessary to mount a proper prosecution.
I presume that you're running a network anyways, so you really don't need to run any extra cat-5. Just stick the main servers next to the internet ingress point, and cascade the switches appropriately.
Gigabit would be nice for the backbone, but it's far from an absolute necessity. People have run diskless machines on 10baseT for years. It's far better than nothing.
For the old machines that don't have the oomph to run Linux on their own, load them up with Terminal servers software and have them do most of their work from the central servers. -- then hook yourself up with a 100Megabit network and let fly. The connection to the central server could be a gigabit link with a 100Megabit fan out to get the most of your network bandwith.
Remember that -- for most of the stuff that students do, the vast majority of their time the computer is going to be doing make-work on their screen while waiting for them to type. All you really need is enough RAM that a student's active processes don't get swapped out to disk. That city government in Florida is a pretty good case study on this kind of setup.
Putting somebody who lobbies for various security companies in charge of designing the security used by DHS creates an immediate conflict of interest. How are we going to know that he's not pushing a given solution because it would keep his (former?) handlers happy as opposed to because it's a good thing. Furthermore, a lobbyist is good at getting other people to do (sometimes stupid) things that you want them to do -- This doesn't necessarily (or even usually) mean that this lobbyist is actually especially knowledgable about the field that (s)he is promoting in. Lobbyists only need to know enough information to sway their target.
It's a little bit fuzzy when you consider that kernels can include the modules that can be either loaded or compiled into it depending on the builder's preferences. I'd bet that a lot of 'kernel' improvements are mostly improvements of modules -- either built in or included. (I haven't read the kernel mailing list for a while now).
"Arg, homey, that bitch could shiver me timber!"
Excuse me, I have to run to the bathroom.
If I don't survive the mortar hit, why should my IPod? It's not like I'm going to be listening to the music while waiting for an autopsy.
I guess that the analogy with Microsoft isn't that bad...
Most of what's pretty about her is very superficial. You buck up a load of money before you really know what you're getting. She immediately goes down on you, and when that's done, you know that your're gonna be badly f*cked.