Don't start with guns -- you don't *really* want to kill anybody. Get some pepper spray and keep it handy just in case of a Worse Case Scenario (which is only likely to happen in a really big city, anyway) and stock up on some gas and canned food just in case the modes of delivery get fucked up. A generator is never a bad investment either, although I suspect the power grid will be pretty well off.
Of course, if you are still worried about the Worst Case, make sure you don't dick with handguns -- if the pepper spray turns out to be insufficiant, plan on having enough firepower to repel a mob - semiauto rifles and the like with plenty of ammo (don't get me wrong, a Glock 17 or somesuch probably isn't a bad idea, either).
In any event, that's probably going to far. Personally, I think that nothing really major will go wrong. Still, I'm worried because I think that people might go overboard just because of the incredible amount of buildup this one has gotten. I'd rather be overprepared than underprepared...
Personally, I plan on spending my New Year's inside my fully gassed-up Ryder truck, backed up to the front of my local Best Buy waiting for the looting to begin.
I figure with a few of my friends and a good plan of attack, we could get a great deal of the good stuff (palms, flat-panel displays, notebooks, etc) loaded into the truck before the National Guard arrived -- screw limiting myself to what I can carry. From there, we head to my nice Y2K-complaint storage locker with the Y2K-compliant key Master Lock bolt and hold tight until my Y2K-compliant fence can set me up.
Go back to Iran. There, having the state press religion on people is legal -- look where it's gotten them.
People like you give religion a bad name. You think that you're God's frickin' gift to humanity, here to set all of us unwashed pagan savages straight with your divine truth. People like you are responsible for the crusades and the inquisitions and the witch burnings of the world. Worse yet, you're the type of moron who would go to the Sistine Chapel and start painting boxers on all the nudes 'cause children might see Adam's dick.
I mean, who the hell do you think you are to say that a parent shouldn't have the right to decide what their kid sees and hears? Who are you to try to deny people their basic rights (in this case access to information) because you don't agree with the source?
Who died and made you the ultimate moral authority? Who are you to decide what I and my kids should or should not have access to?
Somehow, just having Transmeta's logo show up in their graphical presentation seems a bit lacking to me. It sounds more as if people in the Community are just a little bit over anxious to figure out this whole Transmeta thing -- our reactions are starting to seem like the high tech equivalent of Elvis sightings.
Or maybe we should just lock the door of the cabin and post "No Trespassin'" signs around our property and try to forget about that whole "Outside World" thing.
And what exactly is "clean"? I mean, don't you think that Slashdot might just possibly have a eensy-weensy little bit of bias in the way it sets up discussions? I mean, do you *really* think this just started with Katz?
Look, take your own advice: If you have Katz, don't read 'em; you can even set your prefs so that you don't even have to look at his articles. If you still insist on "contaminating" yourself, why don't you go bitch to your dog or someone else who cares about it?
Hell, Loki's better off being a privately-held company (from the standpoint of their execs, anyway). They can already port a good number of games a year (five announced so far, and it's only the end of July) and they gotta be making money hand-over-fist unless the market is a *lot* smaller than I think it is.
With a few decent libraries and some pretty good coders, it can't be that hard to port games from Windows over to Linux (as evidenced by the fact that Loki's working on number five for the year).
This is a hell of a way to make money; is anyone doing it for the Mac? Look, you don't have to worry about if your game will be a flop or not, you don't really have to deal with major production delays (Romero.. Oh, excuse me), and you don't have to sink that much cash into getting the game out the door.
Instead, you license the hits of other companies and port 'em over to a popular platform. You make money, they make money, and everybody wins (assuming the game companies don't catch on and start porting their hits by themselves).
So, how long until we see Alpha Centauri for Linux, damnit?
I dunno dude, I think there's a certain level that most humans are owed.
I mean, c'mon. They guy and his wife (who were still pretty much newlyweds) died on their way to a family wedding. That's really depressing, no matter how it happened or who he was. Besides, it's not like it's his fault that the press is swarming all over it.
Sure, maybe the feds are giving this one special treatment; that doesn't make it funny.
It's not *too* terrible (for first-time radio people), but here's how to improve the show:
1. Assign Roles: By giving each person a specific role, you'll make listening to you easier. Specifically, someone needs to play facilitator; that means opening/closing the show, setting up the topics and helping to direct who should talk (making sure everyone gets a turn and that you all don't try to talk at once). This leads to...
2. Stop Stepping on Each Other: Yeah, I know it's hard sometimes to decide who will talk at any given time, especially when you're recording. Until you get used to the whole setup, I'd suggest only having two people with a live mike at any given time; even people with a lot of radio experience can have troubles coordinating three people, and (no offense) you guys can't handle it yet.
3. Cut down on the jokes: I know it's hard to ad-lib, but try to cut down on the jokes -- you put too many in and you just sound nervous. Besides, humor on even funny-newsy shows is best if it's paced a bit. Otherwise, you end up sounding like (again, I mean this with no offense intended) a bunch of giggling morons.
4. Stop saying "um": I cured myself by having my then-girlfriend stand behind me with a yardstick while I practiced and had her thwack me every time I said "um" (she got mean with that thing).
5. Slow down and enunciate: Remember all those public speaking classes you had to take in your liberal arts program? Well, here's your chance to make use of them. Slow down a bit and make an effort to be clear.
Again, I'm really not trying to rip on the guys here. What I might suggest is that they find someone whose done some radio work to help with their delivery (or even, if that person has a sizable geek side, play the "facilitator" role; think Adam Corolla to Dr. Drew on Loveline). Again, the idea isn't to be like every other radio show, conform, or be unrealistically professional. The idea is to smooth your delivery to make your show more enjoyable.
Actually, we got a hands-on with a BeBox at the 1995 (or was it 1996? I'm getting old) ACM conference at UIUC. Then, the UPL in Madison got their hands on one that I got to play with. Finally, we installed the beta on a powermac at my school.
So yeah, I've played with it. I didn't say that it wasn't a really keen OS, did I? Actually, if you read the original post, I said that superior tech doesn't mean you win the game.
By the by, do you think that the incredibe similarity beween Linux and other UN*Xes might have something to do with it catching on in the server market? Just a thought.
I believe the point I was making was that putting your money into a company like Be is only slightly less risky and investment than burning it in your fireplace (which would at least heat your home). That's not a comment on their product, it's a comment on their business plan (which goes something like "Maybe people will want to dual-boot us! Hey, it could happen!").
In any event, if you'd take your ritlin and read my original post next time, perhaps future rants like this one could be avoided. Of course, perhaps not since I doubt your.03 second attention span has allowed you to read more than the subject line of this post, either.
Er, probably I was thinking of when they killed Apple down to 5% of the market. Or maybe when they muscled out DRDOS or OS/2. Or maybe how the proprietary UN*Xes are losing ground to NT.
Of course, Linux doesn't play by the same rules as the rest 'o them...
Man, I think it might be a bit early to start counting them out. I mean, I like OSS and everything, but losing a little market share doesn't mean they're dead.
A better example is SGI; they're basically living off their savings right now (somewhere in the area of $100 million); they can go on for a couple more years that way. Of course, eventually the cash runs out, then you'd better do something right and quick (yeah, they're moving in the right direction, but I'm fearful that their investments in Linux may take years to pan out).
Let's examine this: Be has effectively 0% of the market, they have only a few programs available for their OS, the market they're aiming at (graphic design, layout, etc) is already unreasonably loyal to their current platform, and they're pursuing a typical closed-source business model in a market utterly owned by MS.
Maybe I'm not seeing it? Look, $61 million isn't *that* much money when you're talking about a fairly big business, especially a business that's been operating without any income for the last 4-5 years.
Besides, what makes them different from all the other "better" systems that will let them beat Windows? I think Microsoft has already proven that nobody can stand against them when they play by the traditional rules in the OS market.
I'm not saying that BeOS is a gonner for sure, I'm just saying that they're a real long shot. I hope nobody out there makes it more than a small part of their portfolio, 'cause after a few short-term gains they're liable to lose their shirts.
Be's stock might do well in the short run, but dumping your hard-earned saving into it is a big gamble. Let's face it, they have no long-term prospects.
I mean, this is just another company foolishly deciding to compete with Microsoft by MS's rules in a game that MS has already beaten every other contender in. If Linux proves anything, it proves that the only way to brawl with Microsoft and survive is to change the rules of the game - to (forgive me) think different.
Besides, Be has no long-term prospects and they don't have an established niche in the market yet. To top it off, the market they claim to be after (graphic design, etc) is one where the user base is infamously loyal to their current platform.
I know I'll probably get flamed 'cause BeOS is a good system, but anyone over the age of 15 should realize that that's not enough (remember MacOS versus DOS back in the old days? In retrospect, which was really better? Yet which one is used on 90% of PCs now?). Trust me, the only hope that Be has in the next couple of years is that they'll be bought out by someone big - maybe IBM or a company like AOL.
I can see Linux becoming a fair sized player in the server market, but unfortunately I think any gains it makes will be primarily at the expense of other UN*Xes and not NT.
Reasoning: More NT "admins" couldn't handle a command line to save their lives. Sure, it may be faster and more powerful and, on occassion, even a more simple way to handle things (compare setting up Apache vs. IIS), but just the thought of doing anything beyond clicking on radio boxes will scare the hell out of 'em. Sort of an advanced technophobia -- an extension of the people who are terrified to even use a computer lest they screw something up.
Sad, really. There are a lot of NT admins (not all, and not even the majority, but still a lot) who should feel guilty about picking up their paychecks. I mean, if a company pays you to come up with computing solutions, it seems really unfair to rule out an entire line of products and possibilities just because you don't know enough to really do your job.
Of course, this article was about appliance servers, but we'll ignore that for now.
Actually, I think that we can expect to see a lot more from SGI over the next few years.
Of course, their huge contribution so far is (the promise of) XFS. Linux and other OSS systems are stealing a few years of progress from that; a journaled file system is a big step towards being truly enterprise ready.
The reason I predict we'll see more from these folks is that one of their VP's (Beau something-I-can't-spell) came out earlier this week and said that there'll only be three OSes in ten years, and IRIX ain't on the list. Assuming that SGI's planning to be around in a decade, and assuming that they're not stupid enough to want to pay the MS-Tax for their entire server line, they have a vested interest in seeing Linux evolve.
Of course, personally I think VP Beau is wrong; I have a feeling that IBM/Sequent's new "next gen UNIX" offering is going to crash and burn on the launch pad -- the potential market's got to be really leary of anything resembling another splinter of UNIX. I can't imagine why they're wasting their time with it and not contributing to Linux; you'd think the suits would have learned by now that you can't play on Microsoft's terms and win.
In any event, I'm looking forward to seeing more quantum leaps with companies donating their "best of the breed" niches to the Second Coming of UNIX. I think the rate will pick up as more companies finally realize that they can't turn back the tide of NT by themselves, and that Linux is their only realistic hope to avoid becoming Just Another Windows OEM.
Of course, if I really wanted to fry military bases or cities it'd make much more sense (and be much more practical) to buy an old soviet warhead off the black market and park a car a few miles from my target.
Hell, just use Mandrake. I'm too lazy to recompile on my own, and it *does* run faster than other distros on the hardware I'm using (optimization rocks).
Interesting, and he does make some good points about the needs of an enterprise system. I wonder specifically what else is needed to make a OS "enterprise-ready"; a journaled file system can't be the end-all.
Of course, most of the "enterprise" settings I've worked in have featured NT with "admins" who couldn't find their ass with both hands. It always amazes me that companies are willing to pay big bucks to people who, whenever a problem comes up, just go running off to a pay-per-incident help 800-number anyway...
All that really counts here is that Harvard is returning the data.
Yeah, the rest of the incident shows them to be completely spineless. So? Hey, as an ISP they have a right to yank anybody's web site if they want too; in this case, at least Packet Storm can go back up.
Yeah, but JP's always been the type that would change sides in a heartbeat if he thought it suited him. I mean, the guy's site begins as a "Script Kiddie Resource", then he switches sides and says he's coming to hunt the hackers on the behalf of the Air Force (I could hear the crackers quaking in their boots), now he's turning into the typical litigious-happy whiner.
Basically, he sucks. He just does this stuff to get attention, like some little kid having a spaz at the supermarket. Hell, all you have to do is read his site to realize that the guy's not quite right in the head (egomania, anyone?).
Anyway, the best way to handle a guy like this is to ignore him.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, if you are still worried about the Worst Case, make sure you don't dick with handguns -- if the pepper spray turns out to be insufficiant, plan on having enough firepower to repel a mob - semiauto rifles and the like with plenty of ammo (don't get me wrong, a Glock 17 or somesuch probably isn't a bad idea, either).
In any event, that's probably going to far. Personally, I think that nothing really major will go wrong. Still, I'm worried because I think that people might go overboard just because of the incredible amount of buildup this one has gotten. I'd rather be overprepared than underprepared...
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I figure with a few of my friends and a good plan of attack, we could get a great deal of the good stuff (palms, flat-panel displays, notebooks, etc) loaded into the truck before the National Guard arrived -- screw limiting myself to what I can carry. From there, we head to my nice Y2K-complaint storage locker with the Y2K-compliant key Master Lock bolt and hold tight until my Y2K-compliant fence can set me up.
----
People like you give religion a bad name. You think that you're God's frickin' gift to humanity, here to set all of us unwashed pagan savages straight with your divine truth. People like you are responsible for the crusades and the inquisitions and the witch burnings of the world. Worse yet, you're the type of moron who would go to the Sistine Chapel and start painting boxers on all the nudes 'cause children might see Adam's dick.
I mean, who the hell do you think you are to say that a parent shouldn't have the right to decide what their kid sees and hears? Who are you to try to deny people their basic rights (in this case access to information) because you don't agree with the source?
Who died and made you the ultimate moral authority? Who are you to decide what I and my kids should or should not have access to?
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Or maybe we should just lock the door of the cabin and post "No Trespassin'" signs around our property and try to forget about that whole "Outside World" thing.
And what exactly is "clean"? I mean, don't you think that Slashdot might just possibly have a eensy-weensy little bit of bias in the way it sets up discussions? I mean, do you *really* think this just started with Katz?
Look, take your own advice: If you have Katz, don't read 'em; you can even set your prefs so that you don't even have to look at his articles. If you still insist on "contaminating" yourself, why don't you go bitch to your dog or someone else who cares about it?
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They don't need to raise a bunch of money.
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With a few decent libraries and some pretty good coders, it can't be that hard to port games from Windows over to Linux (as evidenced by the fact that Loki's working on number five for the year).
This is a hell of a way to make money; is anyone doing it for the Mac? Look, you don't have to worry about if your game will be a flop or not, you don't really have to deal with major production delays (Romero.. Oh, excuse me), and you don't have to sink that much cash into getting the game out the door.
Instead, you license the hits of other companies and port 'em over to a popular platform. You make money, they make money, and everybody wins (assuming the game companies don't catch on and start porting their hits by themselves).
So, how long until we see Alpha Centauri for Linux, damnit?
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I mean, c'mon. They guy and his wife (who were still pretty much newlyweds) died on their way to a family wedding. That's really depressing, no matter how it happened or who he was. Besides, it's not like it's his fault that the press is swarming all over it.
Sure, maybe the feds are giving this one special treatment; that doesn't make it funny.
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1. Assign Roles: By giving each person a specific role, you'll make listening to you easier. Specifically, someone needs to play facilitator; that means opening/closing the show, setting up the topics and helping to direct who should talk (making sure everyone gets a turn and that you all don't try to talk at once). This leads to...
2. Stop Stepping on Each Other: Yeah, I know it's hard sometimes to decide who will talk at any given time, especially when you're recording. Until you get used to the whole setup, I'd suggest only having two people with a live mike at any given time; even people with a lot of radio experience can have troubles coordinating three people, and (no offense) you guys can't handle it yet.
3. Cut down on the jokes: I know it's hard to ad-lib, but try to cut down on the jokes -- you put too many in and you just sound nervous. Besides, humor on even funny-newsy shows is best if it's paced a bit. Otherwise, you end up sounding like (again, I mean this with no offense intended) a bunch of giggling morons.
4. Stop saying "um": I cured myself by having my then-girlfriend stand behind me with a yardstick while I practiced and had her thwack me every time I said "um" (she got mean with that thing).
5. Slow down and enunciate: Remember all those public speaking classes you had to take in your liberal arts program? Well, here's your chance to make use of them. Slow down a bit and make an effort to be clear.
Again, I'm really not trying to rip on the guys here. What I might suggest is that they find someone whose done some radio work to help with their delivery (or even, if that person has a sizable geek side, play the "facilitator" role; think Adam Corolla to Dr. Drew on Loveline). Again, the idea isn't to be like every other radio show, conform, or be unrealistically professional. The idea is to smooth your delivery to make your show more enjoyable.
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So yeah, I've played with it. I didn't say that it wasn't a really keen OS, did I? Actually, if you read the original post, I said that superior tech doesn't mean you win the game.
By the by, do you think that the incredibe similarity beween Linux and other UN*Xes might have something to do with it catching on in the server market? Just a thought.
I believe the point I was making was that putting your money into a company like Be is only slightly less risky and investment than burning it in your fireplace (which would at least heat your home). That's not a comment on their product, it's a comment on their business plan (which goes something like "Maybe people will want to dual-boot us! Hey, it could happen!").
In any event, if you'd take your ritlin and read my original post next time, perhaps future rants like this one could be avoided. Of course, perhaps not since I doubt your .03 second attention span has allowed you to read more than the subject line of this post, either.
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Besides, it was cool to have the Onion there all through high school (in the days before the widespread use of the web).
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Of course, Linux doesn't play by the same rules as the rest 'o them...
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Man, I think it might be a bit early to start counting them out. I mean, I like OSS and everything, but losing a little market share doesn't mean they're dead.
A better example is SGI; they're basically living off their savings right now (somewhere in the area of $100 million); they can go on for a couple more years that way. Of course, eventually the cash runs out, then you'd better do something right and quick (yeah, they're moving in the right direction, but I'm fearful that their investments in Linux may take years to pan out).
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Let's examine this: Be has effectively 0% of the market, they have only a few programs available for their OS, the market they're aiming at (graphic design, layout, etc) is already unreasonably loyal to their current platform, and they're pursuing a typical closed-source business model in a market utterly owned by MS.
Maybe I'm not seeing it? Look, $61 million isn't *that* much money when you're talking about a fairly big business, especially a business that's been operating without any income for the last 4-5 years.
Besides, what makes them different from all the other "better" systems that will let them beat Windows? I think Microsoft has already proven that nobody can stand against them when they play by the traditional rules in the OS market.
I'm not saying that BeOS is a gonner for sure, I'm just saying that they're a real long shot. I hope nobody out there makes it more than a small part of their portfolio, 'cause after a few short-term gains they're liable to lose their shirts.
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Be's stock might do well in the short run, but dumping your hard-earned saving into it is a big gamble. Let's face it, they have no long-term prospects.
I mean, this is just another company foolishly deciding to compete with Microsoft by MS's rules in a game that MS has already beaten every other contender in. If Linux proves anything, it proves that the only way to brawl with Microsoft and survive is to change the rules of the game - to (forgive me) think different.
Besides, Be has no long-term prospects and they don't have an established niche in the market yet. To top it off, the market they claim to be after (graphic design, etc) is one where the user base is infamously loyal to their current platform.
I know I'll probably get flamed 'cause BeOS is a good system, but anyone over the age of 15 should realize that that's not enough (remember MacOS versus DOS back in the old days? In retrospect, which was really better? Yet which one is used on 90% of PCs now?). Trust me, the only hope that Be has in the next couple of years is that they'll be bought out by someone big - maybe IBM or a company like AOL.
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Reasoning: More NT "admins" couldn't handle a command line to save their lives. Sure, it may be faster and more powerful and, on occassion, even a more simple way to handle things (compare setting up Apache vs. IIS), but just the thought of doing anything beyond clicking on radio boxes will scare the hell out of 'em. Sort of an advanced technophobia -- an extension of the people who are terrified to even use a computer lest they screw something up.
Sad, really. There are a lot of NT admins (not all, and not even the majority, but still a lot) who should feel guilty about picking up their paychecks. I mean, if a company pays you to come up with computing solutions, it seems really unfair to rule out an entire line of products and possibilities just because you don't know enough to really do your job.
Of course, this article was about appliance servers, but we'll ignore that for now.
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Of course, their huge contribution so far is (the promise of) XFS. Linux and other OSS systems are stealing a few years of progress from that; a journaled file system is a big step towards being truly enterprise ready.
The reason I predict we'll see more from these folks is that one of their VP's (Beau something-I-can't-spell) came out earlier this week and said that there'll only be three OSes in ten years, and IRIX ain't on the list. Assuming that SGI's planning to be around in a decade, and assuming that they're not stupid enough to want to pay the MS-Tax for their entire server line, they have a vested interest in seeing Linux evolve.
Of course, personally I think VP Beau is wrong; I have a feeling that IBM/Sequent's new "next gen UNIX" offering is going to crash and burn on the launch pad -- the potential market's got to be really leary of anything resembling another splinter of UNIX. I can't imagine why they're wasting their time with it and not contributing to Linux; you'd think the suits would have learned by now that you can't play on Microsoft's terms and win.
In any event, I'm looking forward to seeing more quantum leaps with companies donating their "best of the breed" niches to the Second Coming of UNIX. I think the rate will pick up as more companies finally realize that they can't turn back the tide of NT by themselves, and that Linux is their only realistic hope to avoid becoming Just Another Windows OEM.
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Of course, most of the "enterprise" settings I've worked in have featured NT with "admins" who couldn't find their ass with both hands. It always amazes me that companies are willing to pay big bucks to people who, whenever a problem comes up, just go running off to a pay-per-incident help 800-number anyway...
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Yeah, the rest of the incident shows them to be completely spineless. So? Hey, as an ISP they have a right to yank anybody's web site if they want too; in this case, at least Packet Storm can go back up.
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Basically, he sucks. He just does this stuff to get attention, like some little kid having a spaz at the supermarket. Hell, all you have to do is read his site to realize that the guy's not quite right in the head (egomania, anyone?).
Anyway, the best way to handle a guy like this is to ignore him.
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