In short, you are bitter, boring, suspicious, reactive, a sheep, and a hypocrite. You are also, sad to say, pretty stupid. Most importantly, you never let your lack of knowledge on a particular subject cloud your judgement.
Being a bit harsh on HM country, aren't you?
There are a lot of better things in the UK versus US. The news, for example. BBC news is the best. In the US we get to watch 30 minutes of news with 8 minutes of commercials so each "story" is a quick 30 second sound bite and that's it. Plus out of that 22 minutes, you get "hollywood entertainment" news for about 5 minutes.
I always considered the social conscience on many issues higher in UK than US. For example, when visiting there in '96, there was a ton of news about injustices in Nigera and calls for boycotts against Shell "petrol" while in the U.S. I didn't hear one blessed word about the issue. In the U.S., all news is national unless it directly affects us in some way.
Yeah, UK sucks in a lot of ways, including the high taxes and that everyone is sucking on the government tit. I went to a small town council's offices while visiting and picked up a ton of leaflets on all the programs and benefits one can get. It's no wonder taxes are so high, there's a benefit for everyone in there! But still, as they say, the grass is greener on the other side. You at least have a choice re: web pages. Get served from another country. It's a way to leave the mother country without getting a visa!:)
Let's face it, an attractive woman who sits around the house all day for a for-pay webcam is a quick profit. She is profiting off of horny lonely men, and will not give out any refunds(a drunk friend of mine signed up for jennicam, and refused to give him a refund).
No refund? Of what, $15.00 for a year of one-minute peeks instead of once every 15? That's something to get upset about?!:)
Drunk men waste far more than $15.00 just ordering drinks. Ever been sitting at a bar and go to pay for that one last drink and sit there intently trying to count those one dollar bills in your pocket, hoping not to get it wrong, then just say "fuck it" and pile the entire mess on the table and ask the bartender to keep em coming until you run out? Just losing $15.00 on a binge should be considered a fortunate fate!
Everytime this topic comes up, I go off on the same rant!:-)
Some states don't charge a sales tax. If states attempt to try to enforce reciprocal sales tax agreements on internet sales, states like my home state (Delaware) that are already ruthless in stealing business from other states due to more favorable tax laws, will jump at the opportunity.
"Come locate your net-only retail business here. We don't have a sales tax and we therefore won't respect any other state's agreements to collect sales tax for them."
If that happens, watch the other states start to whine up a storm about net businesses fleeing to Delaware, Oregon, New Hampshire, Alaska, and other tax-free states.
Our tourism office already pushes the "Tax Free" status of Delaware. Bus loads of out-of-state tourists come into the big malls just to shop here. Don't even think Delaware won't take advantage of the greed of other in order to boost business here.
We already have a big Amazon warehouse here too!:)
Re:Be careful of what you ask for, you might get i
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A Post-Microsoft World
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· Score: 2
I might point out to you that the first Apple Macintosh that was released 1984 was equipped with a 3.5" floppy drive. IBM were no pioneers on that field, Apple was.
HP 150s used them before the Mac was released in 1984. HP 150 was a MS/DOS based box.
I have it running in Windows 2000 now and it's consuming 32 megs of RAM all by itself. I grabbed the "leaked" version a few days ago and saw it go up to 60 megs of RAM (according to task manager). IE uses around 16 megs, although since "it is part of the OS" it's hard to determine how much of it's resources are accounted for "elsewhere."
I can't wait to get home to try it on my linux box and see how it rates...
btw, off-topic rant. I'm currently pissed as hell at Netscape for forcing longtime netscape web users to change their username just so they can merge all of their account IDs with the same bloated name space as AOL. That means, stupid usernames like joe235753 for example...:( I had "weave@netscape.net" and now they want to force me to give it up. So much for my "lifetime e-mail address."
Be careful of what you ask for, you might get it.
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A Post-Microsoft World
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First of all, the entire Katz "article" should be moderated down as a Troll.
Before I begin my rant, look at my user history. I'm a big Linux supporter. I'm also a realist. With any change comes benefits and disadvantages.
In the mid 80s, when it came to PC hardware, IBM was the world leader. What they did, the world followed. When they introduced the 3.5" floppy in 1987, other manufacturers scrambled over themselves to include one in their "clones." 3.5" floppies were not new. HP 150s had them for a few years. But no one could break the 5.25" "standard."
Now that IBM is no longer dominant in the field, the hardware end has not progressed as smoothly. For example, we are still stuck with 3.5" floppies and plus we also now have a plethora of high-capacity "super disks, zips, clicks, etc..."
A fragmented OS world will cause additional support headaches, make no mistake about it. It will not be an easy transition.
Don't misinterpret what I am saying. Microsoft killed the browser market by leveraging their OS installed base to push it through. For those that remember, Microsoft was one of the last major players to discover the Internet and leaped to get into it (they even used Spyglass Mosaic to churn out IE in a hurry). They need to be bitch slapped, but if they dropped dead tomorrow, the industry would take a long time to settle.
Now is the best time for open source and standards movements to make a move. If it doesn't happen now and another closed-proprietary OS takes over, we will have lost our best chance...
Just don't go dancing in the streets yet. The loss of Microsoft dominance will hurt everyone in one way or another.
Yeah, a serious charge. One or both of them should explain if it is true. Of course, usually on those types of "settle out of court" agreements, they are also gagged from talking about it, leaving the rest of the world to think the worse...:(
I've been using SFNB for about four years now. They were the first net bank and it runs and runs very well.
They don't do online bill presentation (ie, the bill goes there) but paying bills is simply as filling in the amount and clicking PAY. I have a credit card through them too, so I can schedule an amount to transfer on the exact day it's due and have it credited that day.
Customer service is the best. I can deal with them totally through on-line forms and e-mail or call them if I have to.
I've never had a problem with bill paying. If someone I pay a bill won't take an electronic transfer, they will laser print a check and mail it to the person/firm FOR FREE. I don't even pay for the bloody stamp.
You also get regular checks to use the old fashioned way if you want to. The checking accounts are free and include about 20 e-pays a month if you get direct deposit to it or maintain some balance in there.
I can't believe people are ranting about this X-box thing. This is probably the best hope that the United States has at winning back the long-lost (since Atari) game console market. Our trade deficit with respect to Japan is horrible. Winning back some of that should be good news to anyone in this country, irrespective of your feelings about Microsoft.
On the other hand, I love how Microsoft calls it the X-box. Are they now trying to steal the meaning of X from X-windows? Shouldn't they call it something generically stupid like "Microsoft Box" or "Microsoft Console"?
This kind of FUD gets "5"? An obvious rush of mindwashed unixers moderated this.
Well, I was a bit surprised by the 5, but it wasn't meant to be a troll either. Damn it, I want Windows to live up to the hype. I'm in a huge NT shop at a large college where desktop security is important. Most of the pieces to make my life easier are there, but I see no light at the end of the tunnel.
Take applications for Windows. Damn they suck. Not the apps, but the design. Microsoft can readily fix this if they got their heads out of their asses and realized that the world isn't about one person/one computer with full control.
How can they fix it? By taking their already existing label standards for apps and strenghthing them so new apps at least behave properly. Don't follow the rules, then your app is not "compatible with Windows 2000." But then that would break all of THEIR apps too...
Example:
An running program should never expect to be able to scribble into HKLM. User settings should go into HKCU where they belong.
A program should never EXPECT keys in HKCU to exist. If they don't, a reasonable default should be assumed and/or taken from the.default tree.
A program should NEVER expect to have write access to any device other than %TEMP% and a place under full control of the user to point to as needed (like a home directory, removable media, etc...) Failures to write data due to permission problems should be gracefully handled and not abend the program.
A program should never require that "more software" be installed to make it function. eg, if you turn on app sharing in Net Meeting it needs to "install additional software on your computer" and then fails if the user doesn't have admin rights, causing additional config hassles for sys admins.
All installation programs should have unattended and scripted installs and damn it, not require a reboot. Office 2000 is a prime example. It supports unattended installs, but demands a reboot and after the reboot if it doesn't find network drives mapped the way it expects (like a user home dir) for some unknown reason (to me) it fails horribly. I'm installing the app for my users. User settings shouldn't be set up during an install damn it...
All of my bitching about NT/2000 comes from actual experience trying to make it work as advertised. When Microsoft's own fucking applications don't follow good design standards, how do they expect others to do so.
Do you realize how long I took to get that piece of shit IEAK to work properly? First of all, the IEAK book spends about 250 pages talking about how wonderful it is and all you can do with it, and then when it gets to the point where it talks about how to implement policies, it spends exactly 1.5 pages on what all 200 settings do. During an unattended install, it throws shit loads of stuff into runonce keys but, heaven help you if, before the next reboot you or another program invokes rundll32, because rundll32 triggers all runonce keys to be processed immediately, even if they were installed during THIS boot instance. That one killed me for a long time. Then, during a user logon, you have to ensure loadwc.exe can run and *IT* uses rundll32 to do a lot of the customizations with the policy settings installed. But, get this, rundll32 won't run if it can't for some unknown reason have write access to the runonce key. But allowing users r/w access to that key violates a KB article saying what a huge security risk that key is for users to have r/w access to it. So, I have to give admin rights to users who I want to policy control their computer?! Oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense...:( And none of this is documented in the IEAK docs. No, just hundreds of pages of marketing fluff. I'm a sys admin. I buy an administration kit to get technical details, not marketing hype.
None of this actual implementation stuff ever gets mentioned in the press. All the grand claims of how Microsoft makes administration tasks easier are taken at their word and I wonder if anyone actually tries to use these features. When I hit problems. dejanews and altavista searches for similar things usually turn up nuttin on these issues.
OK, I'm ranting as usual. I really really hate platform bigots, UNIX and NT or whatever. I go forr the best tool for the job. I just really get tired of doing careful research, picking a Microsoft solution as the best tool, then finding out I was an idiot for actually trying to implement the solution and expecting it to actually work.
How many times do I have to be abused before I learn my lesson?:-(
Yes, Linux and UNIX programs have their problems too. I couldn't believe the hassles I had to go through to get Amanda to work with my DG/UX box. sendsize silently kept failing to calc disk sizes cause the fork/exec of runtar was screwed up. But you know, fixing it wasn't a big deal. I had the sources right there, went through the code, found the problem as it relates to my OS. I fixed it and will send the patches back to the authors.
The difference is, when something breaks in an open source OS, I can always fix it myself. When something breaks in a proprietary OS, I'm shit out of luck and can only hope that the next version fixes it and the upgrade costs are not too prohibitive for my installed base of thousands of desktops...
I have seen the future. The future is filled with operating systems that demand that their system binary directories be writable to all, else they fail.
I have seen the future. It has an operating system whose applications, even those written by the OS authors, can ignore the TEMP environment variable and scribble temporary files where-ever they want and fail to operate if they can not do as they wish.
I have seen the future. The future is filled with continued support for legacy drive letters and 8.3 file names with rename.ini kludges during installs.
I have seen the future. The future is an operating system where you have to shell out serious dollars to buy third-party utilities to get around security deficiences in the design of the OS. After all, why fix that pesky virus problem when so many anti-virus companies would go under without that revenue stream coming in.
I have seen the future. It has operating systems whose file systems don't support the concept of being able to delete a file yet have it not actually get deleted until the last remaining process that has it open dies first. For doing so would prevent the need to put dynamic link libraries into a temporary space and have them "installed" during a reboot. Reboots are good. They clear up sloppy OS design problems.
I have seen the future. The future is filled with grand marketing schemes like "Administration Kits" that promise all kinds of abilities to deploy corporate policy restrictions to users yet neglect to mention that these policies are applied by a program that has to write to an area of the OS that was previously recommended be R/O due to the security problems it causes if it is R/W, hence making the ability to make the scheme work as advertised impossible for all users who do not have full permissions to their workstation.
The future, my friends, is about image and not function. UNIX is ugly. It's doomed.
Or in other words, resistance is futile. At least that is what they want us to believe...:)
Wow, what a refreshing read. RMS goes straight to the point, says what he wants to see, and that's it.
And he's right. Amazon is the agreesor. He even agrees that holding software patents is a necessary evil.
O'reilly's messages were long winded marketing double-speak. You know, Amazon and O'reilly need each other. One makes the (damn good) books, the other sells 'em . They are not going to screw one of their sources or distributors too much.
RMS is right. Amazon should state that they will stop using patents as a first-strike weapon. Until then, no coder is safe out there....
That being said, OS sendmail configuration got much easier since m4 configuration files came about.
There are two truths in the universe:
Figuring out how to use m4 with the templates, features, hacks, etc, is very difficult
Configuring sendmail using the m4 macros made it all much easier to handle.
:-)
btw, I'm not a GUI admin NT yuck yuck. I've done some incredible things with sendmail.cf files and I can't fathom doing the same things with other MTAs. But, you know, damn, it can be a bitch!
Anyway, thanks for replying.
P.S. Have you guys noticed that you can still release commercial software *AND* be open source at the same time?
I know those guys deserve to make money and all, we all do, but I worry that it will come at the expense of the open source sendmail. A lot of the complaints from the NT camp and managers is the difficulty in managing sendmail configurations. Sendmail Inc sells nifty management tools to ease the management of sendmail, but they are closed-source commercial products.
Basically it means we'll never see them improve sendmail management issues in the open source version in order to drive business to their commercial product.
In my capacity as as a manager, I understand the need for commercial support and do pay for that. But my goals to have everything open-sourced are circumvented by this product extension scheme.
(Disclaimer: I could be horribly misinformed and stuff like Sendmail switch *is* open sourced, but I've been poking around their sites and haven't seen it downloaded anywhere without paying.)
I've never bought a book or anything else from Amazon. Why? Because many many years ago when they were first starting, I signed up there and browsed a bit, then started to get SPAM from them.
Big deal, I just buy elsewhere. I do most of my book shopping from borders.com, who have never e-mailed me except for my actual order details.
There's a big history about "spamazon" in news.admin.net-abuse.email. Use deja.com to do a search on spamazon and see for yourself. You'll be shocked.
Bezos acts like bn.com is evil because they are bigger than him and have real stores. Give me a break. At least the bigger stores know enough about the net to respect its culture. Bezos is trying to reshape it to profit himself. I hope a big store does buy out amazon.com. Someone needs to go in there and clean house as far as I'm concerned.
BTW, the one thing CEOs care more about then profits for their company is face. They care about saving face, image, etc, etc... I would bet most of that conversation was centered about how the two of them could present this to the public so they both appear to be good guys. Tim has to look like he's championing "the cause" and ole Bezos tries out the poor underdog image, fighting the good fight against big business. If Bezos loses Amazon.com, someday he'll want to head another company. If O'reilley books get bought out and Tim goes away, he'll want to run another company. It's all about their own images.
Think for yourself, don't let the various marketing machines do all the thinking for you.
I had a public speaking gig in Portland Maine in Oct '98 where I spoke to the National Council for Marketing and Public Relations. One of the Marketing folk told me over dinner that they were having serious problems with filter software blocking their College's site (Middlesex Community College). They speculated that it was because the name "sex" was in their name and asked me what they could do about getting unblocked.
I found it hard to believe at the time that a site would be banned simply for having the letters s-e-x WITHIN a word. But these days, nothing surprises me when it comes to these filters.
I told them that these things have really stupid rules for determing which sites to block and the only thing they really could do is change the name of their college since attempting to find every version of filter software out there and getting their site unblocked would be time consuming and probably futile.
From the first time I played with Eliza and Doctor in emacs, and even zippy, I've been fascinated with attempts to produce a program that can carry on a conversation, especially with itself.
While the Jon Katz program usually spews out unintelligent garbage, it is by far leaps and bounds above similar programs written in the 80s. The opportunity for Slashdot readers to finally be able to ask interview questions to the Jon Katz AI program is pretty damn neat! I'm wondering how it will parse my question and what kind of response it will give.
So here goes. "Can we get the source to this program?" It'd be neat to code fork it and have everyones' rev get into a senseless argument with each other.
Beings that I am from Delaware, I know a lot about the state! I'd like to clear up some common misconceptions:
Incorporations: True, over half of the country's companies are incorporated here, but they do not have to have any employees here. Just pay an incorporation fee. Delaware is #1 in incorporations because of its worldwide recognized chancery court where corporate battles are fought and the favorable tax laws for incorporation.
Sales Tax: We don't pay sales tax, but we make up for it in other areas. Our state income tax is higher than surrounding states and property taxes are pretty steep too. There are other larger states with no sales tax around too, like Oregon and New Hampshire. People living in neighboring states therefore can benefit from their state's lower income taxes while still flocking to Delaware to buy their goods tax free.
On the subject of sales taxes, I hate them. Buying stuff without a sales tax is a simple transaction. Many stores in Delaware don't price things in units finer than 5 cents and don't have to deal with pennies at all. Heck, I know some that all prices are multiples of 25 cents meaning their cash registers just have a few slots of quarters and the rest bills. Whenever I head out of state, I end up coming up with a pocket full of useless pennies.
Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey lose a LOT of retail sales to Delaware. Delaware's northern malls, the Christiana Mall and Concord Mall rake in the dollars and their stores are among the best performers in their chains in many cases. The parking lots are full of out-of-state vehicles. Christiana Mall even has out of state tour buses coming in with shoppers from as far away as Virginia and New York.
The PA Sales Tax break on computer purchases will be very nice for people in central and western PA, but I suspect most people in the Philadelphia area that want a computer have already come to Delaware to buy it.
p.s. States with sales taxes require people buying stuff out-of-state to claim and pay the sales tax in their home state. Does anyone actually ever do this?!
Which reminds me, on the subject of Internet Taxation, I've always wondered how it would apply to Delaware. We don't pay sales tax as it is, so why should we pay sales taxes on purchases made over the net? If other states push reciprocal taxation agreements for net purchases, I predict "e-companies" will flock to Delaware. Since Delaware has nothing to gain from reciprocal agreements, anything sold from an e-tailer in Delaware could technically remain tax free to the entire country.
Yeah, usenet is dead, long live usenet
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Is Usenet Dying?
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· Score: 4
I love stories like this. I love the fact that newbies can't find usenet. Let the world think that usenet is dead, then the spammers will have little reason to blast it.
In the meantime, those of us who have been using it since the 80s can continue to do so in peace and quiet.
It's like the CB craze in the 70s. It used to be a self-regulating anarchy, populated by a close knit community. Then it became popular, the common idiot came into it, made it useless, and then left. Now you still have a small number of CBers that use it a lot and it's gone back to what it was in the old days.
May usenet suffer the same fate. The world can naff off. The greater the intelligence needed to find usenet, the better for all involved.
We are all assuming this means something like PGP signing an e-mail message. Does it? Who knows when it comes to Congress (there was just a story a day or so ago that says many of them still don't use e-mail).
I was at a web site and it asked me to "sign" an agreement by typing my name into a signature box. By typing my name in there, I agreee to the terms. Is that what these bafoons consider a digital signature?
OK, let's assume this is a real digital private-key sort of a thing. What about the logistics? Who signs your key? The new Verisign/Thawte monopoly? May God help us all if so. Even if not, keep considering.
We are talking about typical Americans here folks. The same flock()ing idiots that are my users that post their account password on their monitor, the same idiots like our students who get a sheet listing their ID and password and I end up finding them lying around in the cafeteria, halls, and classrooms later.
A "real" digital signature using a private key is cool because it combines "what you know" with "what you have" (passphrase and the key respectively). Pass phrases will be passed around, and users will lose their keys and/or not protect them either.
On the other hands, written signatures are about useless now anyway. How many of us have signed the new credit card terminals that are just basically digitizing your signature you scribble on the screen. I've always feared those tablets also record stroke and weight. If so, run that data through a plotting device with a traditional pen and crank out all of the "legitimate" signature copies that you want. (Which is why I always trash my signature when signing those stupid things by writing something signing it and inserting the name of the story over top of it like Ken 'best buy' Weaverling (but kind of overlapped).
As a followup to my own comment above, I have to admit I made a mistake. Real contacted me and they *HAD* answered my e-mail. I got the agreement on January 7.
However, upon reviewing the agreement I still stand by my previous rant. It might be free in cost, but not in obligation. All the agreement allows me to do is to offer Real for download from one of our own servers. I still must not install it on behalf of the user because I'd be violating their section 1c saying I can't disable the user from seeing the EULA when they first INSTALL Real.
I also must report to them quarterly how many of my users downloaded the real player. Yack...
I install WMP for my users. Why? Because it's illegal for me to install Real Player.
Yes, that's right. Their license agreement specifically states that redistribution is not permitted, only end users are permitted to download and install their player. There is nothing on their web site stating of a way this restriction can be removed either.
Somehow they got it in their mind that corporate business users are permitted to freely download and install apps on their managed PCs. Plus, as a college, we have to keep lab PCs orderly by locking down permissions so students can install stuff on the computers either.
(Yes, they all run NT, not Linux).
I wrote to Real and complained and they told me to send my request to client_redistribution@real.com but they never respond to my e-mails. (My latest attempt to contact them was the middle of January 2000)
So -- flock() 'em. I installed WMP along with IE, which is permitted (license wise) if done via the IEAK.
Free is useless to me if I am forbidden by license to freely copy the software onto the client machines I maintain. If Real thinks all users manage their own PCs, they are horribly out of touch with reality.
You may hate Microsoft, but at least they understand the business environment. Real can shrivel up and die for all I care.
BTW, did we all forget already Real's huge intentional privacy violation regarding their players sending player listening info back to Real?
I don't mean to get off on a rant here, but Microsoft bashing is getting old. Yeah, I love Linux. Where I control the decisions (my home network of 6 machines), I have everything run by Linux clients and servers and use UNIX on servers at work to run everything from Apache to Samba. But the desktop corporate world still revolves around Microsoft and I can make no sane business case to have students to use anything other than that.
If you read my post history, you can see me ranting about the often horrible cruft Microsoft shovels out too. But in this case, WMP beats Real in the Windows world and beyond that, there are no other viable alternatives (Quicktime install methods and redistribution crap deserves a separate rant...)
Slashdot Mirror
Being a bit harsh on HM country, aren't you?
There are a lot of better things in the UK versus US. The news, for example. BBC news is the best. In the US we get to watch 30 minutes of news with 8 minutes of commercials so each "story" is a quick 30 second sound bite and that's it. Plus out of that 22 minutes, you get "hollywood entertainment" news for about 5 minutes.
I always considered the social conscience on many issues higher in UK than US. For example, when visiting there in '96, there was a ton of news about injustices in Nigera and calls for boycotts against Shell "petrol" while in the U.S. I didn't hear one blessed word about the issue. In the U.S., all news is national unless it directly affects us in some way.
Yeah, UK sucks in a lot of ways, including the high taxes and that everyone is sucking on the government tit. I went to a small town council's offices while visiting and picked up a ton of leaflets on all the programs and benefits one can get. It's no wonder taxes are so high, there's a benefit for everyone in there! But still, as they say, the grass is greener on the other side. You at least have a choice re: web pages. Get served from another country. It's a way to leave the mother country without getting a visa! :)
No refund? Of what, $15.00 for a year of one-minute peeks instead of once every 15? That's something to get upset about?! :)
Drunk men waste far more than $15.00 just ordering drinks. Ever been sitting at a bar and go to pay for that one last drink and sit there intently trying to count those one dollar bills in your pocket, hoping not to get it wrong, then just say "fuck it" and pile the entire mess on the table and ask the bartender to keep em coming until you run out? Just losing $15.00 on a binge should be considered a fortunate fate!
Some states don't charge a sales tax. If states attempt to try to enforce reciprocal sales tax agreements on internet sales, states like my home state (Delaware) that are already ruthless in stealing business from other states due to more favorable tax laws, will jump at the opportunity.
"Come locate your net-only retail business here. We don't have a sales tax and we therefore won't respect any other state's agreements to collect sales tax for them."
If that happens, watch the other states start to whine up a storm about net businesses fleeing to Delaware, Oregon, New Hampshire, Alaska, and other tax-free states.
Our tourism office already pushes the "Tax Free" status of Delaware. Bus loads of out-of-state tourists come into the big malls just to shop here. Don't even think Delaware won't take advantage of the greed of other in order to boost business here.
We already have a big Amazon warehouse here too! :)
I can't wait to get home to try it on my linux box and see how it rates...
btw, off-topic rant. I'm currently pissed as hell at Netscape for forcing longtime netscape web users to change their username just so they can merge all of their account IDs with the same bloated name space as AOL. That means, stupid usernames like joe235753 for example... :( I had "weave@netscape.net" and now they want to force me to give it up. So much for my "lifetime e-mail address."
Before I begin my rant, look at my user history. I'm a big Linux supporter. I'm also a realist. With any change comes benefits and disadvantages.
In the mid 80s, when it came to PC hardware, IBM was the world leader. What they did, the world followed. When they introduced the 3.5" floppy in 1987, other manufacturers scrambled over themselves to include one in their "clones." 3.5" floppies were not new. HP 150s had them for a few years. But no one could break the 5.25" "standard."
Now that IBM is no longer dominant in the field, the hardware end has not progressed as smoothly. For example, we are still stuck with 3.5" floppies and plus we also now have a plethora of high-capacity "super disks, zips, clicks, etc..."
A fragmented OS world will cause additional support headaches, make no mistake about it. It will not be an easy transition.
Don't misinterpret what I am saying. Microsoft killed the browser market by leveraging their OS installed base to push it through. For those that remember, Microsoft was one of the last major players to discover the Internet and leaped to get into it (they even used Spyglass Mosaic to churn out IE in a hurry). They need to be bitch slapped, but if they dropped dead tomorrow, the industry would take a long time to settle.
Now is the best time for open source and standards movements to make a move. If it doesn't happen now and another closed-proprietary OS takes over, we will have lost our best chance...
Just don't go dancing in the streets yet. The loss of Microsoft dominance will hurt everyone in one way or another.
I theenk thees is a cese-a ooff feelter descreemineshun.
I theenk it's teeme-a Undufer get's zeeur esses sooed! :)
I dink dis be a case uh filta' descriminashun.
I dink it's time Andova' get's deir asses sued. Right On! :)
Yeah, a serious charge. One or both of them should explain if it is true. Of course, usually on those types of "settle out of court" agreements, they are also gagged from talking about it, leaving the rest of the world to think the worse... :(
They don't do online bill presentation (ie, the bill goes there) but paying bills is simply as filling in the amount and clicking PAY. I have a credit card through them too, so I can schedule an amount to transfer on the exact day it's due and have it credited that day.
Customer service is the best. I can deal with them totally through on-line forms and e-mail or call them if I have to.
I've never had a problem with bill paying. If someone I pay a bill won't take an electronic transfer, they will laser print a check and mail it to the person/firm FOR FREE. I don't even pay for the bloody stamp.
You also get regular checks to use the old fashioned way if you want to. The checking accounts are free and include about 20 e-pays a month if you get direct deposit to it or maintain some balance in there.
Overall, I am HIGHLY satisfied with them.
On the other hand, I love how Microsoft calls it the X-box. Are they now trying to steal the meaning of X from X-windows? Shouldn't they call it something generically stupid like "Microsoft Box" or "Microsoft Console"?
Think TV banner ads. :-(
You think those network bugs in the lower-right corner of the screen are annoying? You ain't seen nuttin yet baby...
Well, I was a bit surprised by the 5, but it wasn't meant to be a troll either. Damn it, I want Windows to live up to the hype. I'm in a huge NT shop at a large college where desktop security is important. Most of the pieces to make my life easier are there, but I see no light at the end of the tunnel.
Take applications for Windows. Damn they suck. Not the apps, but the design. Microsoft can readily fix this if they got their heads out of their asses and realized that the world isn't about one person/one computer with full control.
How can they fix it? By taking their already existing label standards for apps and strenghthing them so new apps at least behave properly. Don't follow the rules, then your app is not "compatible with Windows 2000." But then that would break all of THEIR apps too...
Example:
All of my bitching about NT/2000 comes from actual experience trying to make it work as advertised. When Microsoft's own fucking applications don't follow good design standards, how do they expect others to do so.
Do you realize how long I took to get that piece of shit IEAK to work properly? First of all, the IEAK book spends about 250 pages talking about how wonderful it is and all you can do with it, and then when it gets to the point where it talks about how to implement policies, it spends exactly 1.5 pages on what all 200 settings do. During an unattended install, it throws shit loads of stuff into runonce keys but, heaven help you if, before the next reboot you or another program invokes rundll32, because rundll32 triggers all runonce keys to be processed immediately, even if they were installed during THIS boot instance. That one killed me for a long time. Then, during a user logon, you have to ensure loadwc.exe can run and *IT* uses rundll32 to do a lot of the customizations with the policy settings installed. But, get this, rundll32 won't run if it can't for some unknown reason have write access to the runonce key. But allowing users r/w access to that key violates a KB article saying what a huge security risk that key is for users to have r/w access to it. So, I have to give admin rights to users who I want to policy control their computer?! Oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense... :( And none of this is documented in the IEAK docs. No, just hundreds of pages of marketing fluff. I'm a sys admin. I buy an administration kit to get technical details, not marketing hype.
None of this actual implementation stuff ever gets mentioned in the press. All the grand claims of how Microsoft makes administration tasks easier are taken at their word and I wonder if anyone actually tries to use these features. When I hit problems. dejanews and altavista searches for similar things usually turn up nuttin on these issues.
OK, I'm ranting as usual. I really really hate platform bigots, UNIX and NT or whatever. I go forr the best tool for the job. I just really get tired of doing careful research, picking a Microsoft solution as the best tool, then finding out I was an idiot for actually trying to implement the solution and expecting it to actually work.
How many times do I have to be abused before I learn my lesson? :-(
Yes, Linux and UNIX programs have their problems too. I couldn't believe the hassles I had to go through to get Amanda to work with my DG/UX box. sendsize silently kept failing to calc disk sizes cause the fork/exec of runtar was screwed up. But you know, fixing it wasn't a big deal. I had the sources right there, went through the code, found the problem as it relates to my OS. I fixed it and will send the patches back to the authors.
The difference is, when something breaks in an open source OS, I can always fix it myself. When something breaks in a proprietary OS, I'm shit out of luck and can only hope that the next version fixes it and the upgrade costs are not too prohibitive for my installed base of thousands of desktops...
I have seen the future. The future is filled with operating systems that demand that their system binary directories be writable to all, else they fail.
I have seen the future. It has an operating system whose applications, even those written by the OS authors, can ignore the TEMP environment variable and scribble temporary files where-ever they want and fail to operate if they can not do as they wish.
I have seen the future. The future is filled with continued support for legacy drive letters and 8.3 file names with rename.ini kludges during installs.
I have seen the future. The future is an operating system where you have to shell out serious dollars to buy third-party utilities to get around security deficiences in the design of the OS. After all, why fix that pesky virus problem when so many anti-virus companies would go under without that revenue stream coming in.
I have seen the future. It has operating systems whose file systems don't support the concept of being able to delete a file yet have it not actually get deleted until the last remaining process that has it open dies first. For doing so would prevent the need to put dynamic link libraries into a temporary space and have them "installed" during a reboot. Reboots are good. They clear up sloppy OS design problems.
I have seen the future. The future is filled with grand marketing schemes like "Administration Kits" that promise all kinds of abilities to deploy corporate policy restrictions to users yet neglect to mention that these policies are applied by a program that has to write to an area of the OS that was previously recommended be R/O due to the security problems it causes if it is R/W, hence making the ability to make the scheme work as advertised impossible for all users who do not have full permissions to their workstation.
The future, my friends, is about image and not function. UNIX is ugly. It's doomed.
Or in other words, resistance is futile. At least that is what they want us to believe... :)
And he's right. Amazon is the agreesor. He even agrees that holding software patents is a necessary evil.
O'reilly's messages were long winded marketing double-speak. You know, Amazon and O'reilly need each other. One makes the (damn good) books, the other sells 'em . They are not going to screw one of their sources or distributors too much.
RMS is right. Amazon should state that they will stop using patents as a first-strike weapon. Until then, no coder is safe out there....
There are two truths in the universe:
btw, I'm not a GUI admin NT yuck yuck. I've done some incredible things with sendmail.cf files and I can't fathom doing the same things with other MTAs. But, you know, damn, it can be a bitch!
Anyway, thanks for replying.
P.S. Have you guys noticed that you can still release commercial software *AND* be open source at the same time?
Basically it means we'll never see them improve sendmail management issues in the open source version in order to drive business to their commercial product.
In my capacity as as a manager, I understand the need for commercial support and do pay for that. But my goals to have everything open-sourced are circumvented by this product extension scheme.
(Disclaimer: I could be horribly misinformed and stuff like Sendmail switch *is* open sourced, but I've been poking around their sites and haven't seen it downloaded anywhere without paying.)
Big deal, I just buy elsewhere. I do most of my book shopping from borders.com, who have never e-mailed me except for my actual order details.
There's a big history about "spamazon" in news.admin.net-abuse.email. Use deja.com to do a search on spamazon and see for yourself. You'll be shocked.
Bezos acts like bn.com is evil because they are bigger than him and have real stores. Give me a break. At least the bigger stores know enough about the net to respect its culture. Bezos is trying to reshape it to profit himself. I hope a big store does buy out amazon.com. Someone needs to go in there and clean house as far as I'm concerned.
BTW, the one thing CEOs care more about then profits for their company is face. They care about saving face, image, etc, etc... I would bet most of that conversation was centered about how the two of them could present this to the public so they both appear to be good guys. Tim has to look like he's championing "the cause" and ole Bezos tries out the poor underdog image, fighting the good fight against big business. If Bezos loses Amazon.com, someday he'll want to head another company. If O'reilley books get bought out and Tim goes away, he'll want to run another company. It's all about their own images.
Think for yourself, don't let the various marketing machines do all the thinking for you.
I found it hard to believe at the time that a site would be banned simply for having the letters s-e-x WITHIN a word. But these days, nothing surprises me when it comes to these filters.
I told them that these things have really stupid rules for determing which sites to block and the only thing they really could do is change the name of their college since attempting to find every version of filter software out there and getting their site unblocked would be time consuming and probably futile.
Sigh...
While the Jon Katz program usually spews out unintelligent garbage, it is by far leaps and bounds above similar programs written in the 80s. The opportunity for Slashdot readers to finally be able to ask interview questions to the Jon Katz AI program is pretty damn neat! I'm wondering how it will parse my question and what kind of response it will give.
So here goes. "Can we get the source to this program?" It'd be neat to code fork it and have everyones' rev get into a senseless argument with each other.
On the subject of sales taxes, I hate them. Buying stuff without a sales tax is a simple transaction. Many stores in Delaware don't price things in units finer than 5 cents and don't have to deal with pennies at all. Heck, I know some that all prices are multiples of 25 cents meaning their cash registers just have a few slots of quarters and the rest bills. Whenever I head out of state, I end up coming up with a pocket full of useless pennies.
Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey lose a LOT of retail sales to Delaware. Delaware's northern malls, the Christiana Mall and Concord Mall rake in the dollars and their stores are among the best performers in their chains in many cases. The parking lots are full of out-of-state vehicles. Christiana Mall even has out of state tour buses coming in with shoppers from as far away as Virginia and New York.
The PA Sales Tax break on computer purchases will be very nice for people in central and western PA, but I suspect most people in the Philadelphia area that want a computer have already come to Delaware to buy it.
p.s. States with sales taxes require people buying stuff out-of-state to claim and pay the sales tax in their home state. Does anyone actually ever do this?!
Which reminds me, on the subject of Internet Taxation, I've always wondered how it would apply to Delaware. We don't pay sales tax as it is, so why should we pay sales taxes on purchases made over the net? If other states push reciprocal taxation agreements for net purchases, I predict "e-companies" will flock to Delaware. Since Delaware has nothing to gain from reciprocal agreements, anything sold from an e-tailer in Delaware could technically remain tax free to the entire country.
In the meantime, those of us who have been using it since the 80s can continue to do so in peace and quiet.
It's like the CB craze in the 70s. It used to be a self-regulating anarchy, populated by a close knit community. Then it became popular, the common idiot came into it, made it useless, and then left. Now you still have a small number of CBers that use it a lot and it's gone back to what it was in the old days.
May usenet suffer the same fate. The world can naff off. The greater the intelligence needed to find usenet, the better for all involved.
I was at a web site and it asked me to "sign" an agreement by typing my name into a signature box. By typing my name in there, I agreee to the terms. Is that what these bafoons consider a digital signature?
OK, let's assume this is a real digital private-key sort of a thing. What about the logistics? Who signs your key? The new Verisign/Thawte monopoly? May God help us all if so. Even if not, keep considering.
We are talking about typical Americans here folks. The same flock()ing idiots that are my users that post their account password on their monitor, the same idiots like our students who get a sheet listing their ID and password and I end up finding them lying around in the cafeteria, halls, and classrooms later.
A "real" digital signature using a private key is cool because it combines "what you know" with "what you have" (passphrase and the key respectively). Pass phrases will be passed around, and users will lose their keys and/or not protect them either.
On the other hands, written signatures are about useless now anyway. How many of us have signed the new credit card terminals that are just basically digitizing your signature you scribble on the screen. I've always feared those tablets also record stroke and weight. If so, run that data through a plotting device with a traditional pen and crank out all of the "legitimate" signature copies that you want. (Which is why I always trash my signature when signing those stupid things by writing something signing it and inserting the name of the story over top of it like Ken 'best buy' Weaverling (but kind of overlapped).
However, upon reviewing the agreement I still stand by my previous rant. It might be free in cost, but not in obligation. All the agreement allows me to do is to offer Real for download from one of our own servers. I still must not install it on behalf of the user because I'd be violating their section 1c saying I can't disable the user from seeing the EULA when they first INSTALL Real.
I also must report to them quarterly how many of my users downloaded the real player. Yack...
Yes, that's right. Their license agreement specifically states that redistribution is not permitted, only end users are permitted to download and install their player. There is nothing on their web site stating of a way this restriction can be removed either.
Somehow they got it in their mind that corporate business users are permitted to freely download and install apps on their managed PCs. Plus, as a college, we have to keep lab PCs orderly by locking down permissions so students can install stuff on the computers either.
(Yes, they all run NT, not Linux).
I wrote to Real and complained and they told me to send my request to client_redistribution@real.com but they never respond to my e-mails. (My latest attempt to contact them was the middle of January 2000)
So -- flock() 'em. I installed WMP along with IE, which is permitted (license wise) if done via the IEAK.
Free is useless to me if I am forbidden by license to freely copy the software onto the client machines I maintain. If Real thinks all users manage their own PCs, they are horribly out of touch with reality.
You may hate Microsoft, but at least they understand the business environment. Real can shrivel up and die for all I care.
BTW, did we all forget already Real's huge intentional privacy violation regarding their players sending player listening info back to Real?
I don't mean to get off on a rant here, but Microsoft bashing is getting old. Yeah, I love Linux. Where I control the decisions (my home network of 6 machines), I have everything run by Linux clients and servers and use UNIX on servers at work to run everything from Apache to Samba. But the desktop corporate world still revolves around Microsoft and I can make no sane business case to have students to use anything other than that.
If you read my post history, you can see me ranting about the often horrible cruft Microsoft shovels out too. But in this case, WMP beats Real in the Windows world and beyond that, there are no other viable alternatives (Quicktime install methods and redistribution crap deserves a separate rant...)