Right, these are all merely symptoms, not causes. Postwar america is very nihilistic. We live in a moral vacuum, our children are raised on TV, the previous generation, emotionally exhausted by the war (ww2), just wanted normal, ordinary lives, hence the 50's. (I think "Saving Private Ryan" helped me understand why the 1950's were that way more than anything else.)
To make matters worse, we have huge, bloated media content corporations (like MTV or Time-Warner, etc) pushing all sorts of crap and stupidity into the mainstream. This is truly horrible since the only value behind this is "how much can I make?". Since they've exhauseted all respectable avenues of approach, the only thing left for them to do is to become weirder and weirder. One wonders how many times the RIAA can raise the bar of weirdness (can they out do Marylin Manson? I'm waiting!).
They stare into this abyss and have no idea what to do. They're not intelligent enough to "bootstrap" themselves out of it (who is?), and their tutors are not even aware of the problem. The only thing left is to reject this emptiness by ending it in extreme violence. One wonders why it doesn't happen more often.
These children are so vacuous, so empty. It's telling that we (and these children) must look to "Hitler" as an example of "evil", and it's no surprise that they had an obsession with him. Have the words "good" and "evil" become so trite that we must continually turn to the greatest montster in human history for an example of evil? To use Hitler as an example of evil is pure, unadulterated hyperbole. It isn't needed, but he comes up in any discussion of evil among young people, because they have no moral grounding on which to base their judgements.
Unless you purchase NT with a new computer, it's simply too expensive for most compaines to "upgrade" to it ($250 a pop). It just isn't worth it. It is OK as long as you get a resonable configuration and then leave it alone.
I suggest you read "Consciousness Explained" by Dennett for an excellent debunking of Cartesian dualism (especially the modern, silent variety).
... and I suggest you read John Searle's "Chinese Room Arguement" that debunked just about all the rubbish Dennet ever came up with. No one takes functionalism seriously any more, AFIAK. Roger Penrose also has a great book out about this (and AI in general - "The Emporer's New Mind")
Er.. innocent until proven guilty? Red Hat has done nothing to suggest all of this, except that they are hustling their butts off trying to make linux popular (and what do they get for it?). There are some minor technical issues with Red Hat that get brought up frequently - the weird placement of installed packages in the biggest one. Other thant that Red Hat is a very solid distro. Let's look at the main myths:
Red Hat is getting popular, so they must be getting like Micros~1.
Nick Petreley does a good job of refuting this, look
here Most of this is cooked up by students with nothing better to do. Look at the hubub surrounding Caldera's latest release - are they the next Micros~1?
Red Hat is the distro for Windows haters, not "serious" unix folks.
This is ridiculous, I don't know where this came from, perhaps mainly inspired by the FVWM95 default Window Manager that shipped with Red Hat 5.x. Whatever.
Facts:
Red Hat offers a LOT of value for the money. Cutting edge software, a nice powerful installer, good package management, great response to security issues, etc.
Red Hat returns stuff to the community (all their management utils are open source. They use linuxconf by default instead of something like YAST
Bottom line: Red Hat keeps up with the times, they play by the rules, and their distro is very good. What else do you want?
They haven't done anything wrong yet.
Actually, it is a good idea ...
on
Red Hat 6.0
·
· Score: 1
Which is a sore point because this is something I regularly make fun of windows users for.
However, it can be easier, if you know where all your stuff (should be in $HOME) is, don't have too many apps to reinstall, and have an easy way to back the stuff up.
I agree, most of the response is meaningless nit-picking. Who cares who invented the GUI? I'm sure Stephenson knows, he was simplifying things a little. It was a well written piece; the response sounds more like yet another incensed and bitter mac user.
What the hell is going on with this? It seems like all the major news sites are in competition to see who has the most unreadable HTML. It's getting ridiculous, I just use 1280x1024 and I can barely read this page. I use windows at work in 1024x768 and I saw a page (it isn't as bad in Netscape linux as in Windows) the other day that had a dropdown box that used a typeface no larger than a small pin head. Why do people use those stupid tags? Can't they make this illegal or something? It must be all those Win CrapApps that people use to write html.
I read about this in Yahoo (umm, I was bored at the supermarket check out line, I don't subscribe to yahoo), and they referred to MP4 (not MPEG4, but that self executing Wincrap(TM) someone produced a while back) as a "more secure format" than MP3. Will it ever end?
They did release their last single in that horrid MP4 junk anyway. I hope they release the album as MP3. It's quite probably that people would still prefer to buy a CD MP3 album, since they wouldn't be wasting disk space, and they would get the extra stuff (liner notes, art, whatever) with the CD. I would. All they have to do is add a little value and people will buy the CD's. The music itself doesn not have to cost anything.
People talk about the SMP stuff all the time, but the fact is 2.2 has some very nice desktop features too. Mainly fbcon (slrn in all it's glory!), support for TV cards, more filesystems, joysticks, etc.
For servers there's more new stuff than you can shake a stick at. There's a ton of ip routing features in it, and the firewall code was reworked. Very nice.
Of course, I still can't get my parallel port to work, but that's another story. I would say upgrading to 2.2 was very painful for me, but I learned quite a bit in the process.
Now I won't say this isn't your fault, but it is a little like leaving your bicycle outside on the front lawn in a bad neighborhood overnight - it's going to get stolen.
You have to have backups, even it it's just copying the files to another drive or to another computer on the network. You have to use hosts.allow/hosts.deny, and you have to turn everything off you're not using - Red Hat is especially liberal with inetd by default. Bare minimum, or you will get cracked sooner or later if you on a leased line.
That said, I know a little how you feel. Someone used the mountd exploit on me a while back (RH 5.1), but was unable to install his 3l33t root shell. He left his.bash_history in my root directory too. The shamefulness of being hacked was made a little more bearable by seeing how clueless he was with bash. At worst the experience turned me on to all the stupid shit they try to do.
Needless to say I've learned a lot about security since then...
Bah! Linux is good but it can't do client stuff as well as some
? What on earth are you talking about? BeOS is nice, but they are positioning themselves as a niche product, just like Apple did. Nothing wrong with that, but you are, well, doomed to be a niche product.
Linux "can't do client stuff"? Huh? It can do anything at all. In fact, you could share a single PC among three or four users with xterms (once people get into this idea xterms should become hideously cheap) and mount the $HOMEs via smb/nfs/coda (has anyone played with coda yet?) from the central server. Beautiful. Having a P2-500 PC on everyone's desk is a total waste. Linux would make the best client OS ever.
Besides, I heard that BeOS has no filesystem security - is this true? If it is it has no place in a modern business.
... of the Butler Group repeating the FUD from a while back. The FUD is getting thick folks, very thick. It looks like DH Brown and Butler are outdoing even Gartner these days. I wonder how much Micros~1 is paying them. If you missed it, it's here. Unfortunately, you'll probaby need Real Player G2 to look at it.
Noteable quotes:
"Linux has no value as a technology in its own right"
"Linux came about because of a need for an alternative to windows"
It doesn't really matter what major you have; CS would be good, but they won't teach you the applications you need to know, or networking, or any of that stuff. Buy the ORA book on TCP/IP for starts, perl, sql are probably the most useful languages. And you need to know hardware. You certainly don't need a CS degree to be a sysadmin, a few of the right CS classes will most definitely help.
College should be an enjoyable experience. I can't understand this attitude that one doesn't need it or want it.
I loved my college years and I would not trade the time spent there for any 9-5 job. 9-5 = yuck.
Secondly, most of you guys are going for tech degrees which are, frankly, boring in terms of the curriculum you can take; most of those degrees are pretty much mapped out for you with no room for philosophy, music, literature, languages. Technical folks seem to completely ignore the liberal arts curriculum, which is really what an education is all about.
Please read Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind for an excellent analysis of education today. If you hate college, or are a technical person, please read this book.
College is most definitely neccesary. Well, if you are interested in learning anything, anyway. You can certainly learn programming and computers on your own (I did; I didn't study anything computer related in school), but you'll be cheating only yourself without a liberal education.
This is something technologists don't think about as much as they should, although by ad large I agree with this fellow. We live in a painful age because technology is creating as many problems as it is solving. Yes, I can email people in siberia a the flick of a button. However, my life is also extremely complicated. Life is much more complicatd than it was just 15 years ago, let alone 50 years ago. I don't mean my job, I mean just living. Taking care of day to day business.
What about medicine? A shining example of technology introducing and creating problems... mdeicine has, for example, greatly increased the lifespan of those who can afford treatment, but it hasn't addressed the quality of that life. So we have seniors living in nursing homes and people stuck on machines for years, living pathetic meaninless existences.
Slashdot Mirror
Like the dragon holding Balmer/Gate's head in his mouth, shaking them violently, with gore everywhere.
Oh well, they're coming to put my restraints back on.
Later!
most of them anyway. LJ pushes commercial software way too much. I know they need to make money, but ...
To make matters worse, we have huge, bloated media content corporations (like MTV or Time-Warner, etc) pushing all sorts of crap and stupidity into the mainstream. This is truly horrible since the only value behind this is "how much can I make?". Since they've exhauseted all respectable avenues of approach, the only thing left for them to do is to become weirder and weirder. One wonders how many times the RIAA can raise the bar of weirdness (can they out do Marylin Manson? I'm waiting!).
They stare into this abyss and have no idea what to do. They're not intelligent enough to "bootstrap" themselves out of it (who is?), and their tutors are not even aware of the problem. The only thing left is to reject this emptiness by ending it in extreme violence. One wonders why it doesn't happen more often.
These children are so vacuous, so empty. It's telling that we (and these children) must look to "Hitler" as an example of "evil", and it's no surprise that they had an obsession with him. Have the words "good" and "evil" become so trite that we must continually turn to the greatest montster in human history for an example of evil? To use Hitler as an example of evil is pure, unadulterated hyperbole. It isn't needed, but he comes up in any discussion of evil among young people, because they have no moral grounding on which to base their judgements.
From now on I'm referring to all Micros~1 systems as "legacy windows machines".
Unless you purchase NT with a new computer, it's simply too expensive for most compaines to "upgrade" to it ($250 a pop). It just isn't worth it.
It is OK as long as you get a resonable configuration and then leave it alone.
You're all right; I read a very good refutation of this by Larry Hauser today. I guess it's obvious I don't keep up.
slack is a training distro
- Red Hat is getting popular, so they must be getting like Micros~1.
- Red Hat is the distro for Windows haters, not "serious" unix folks.
Facts:- Red Hat offers a LOT of value for the money. Cutting edge software, a nice powerful installer, good package management, great response to security issues, etc.
- Red Hat returns stuff to the community (all their management utils are open source. They use linuxconf by default instead of something like YAST
Bottom line: Red Hat keeps up with the times, they play by the rules, and their distro is very good. What else do you want?They haven't done anything wrong yet.
However, it can be easier, if you know where all your stuff (should be in $HOME) is, don't have too many apps to reinstall, and have an easy way to back the stuff up.
I agree, most of the response is meaningless nit-picking. Who cares who invented the GUI? I'm sure Stephenson knows, he was simplifying things a little. It was a well written piece; the response sounds more like yet another incensed and bitter mac user.
it's fun
Oh, I almost forgot. NSI sucks. What arrogance.
They did release their last single in that horrid MP4 junk anyway. I hope they release the album as MP3. It's quite probably that people would still prefer to buy a CD MP3 album, since they wouldn't be wasting disk space, and they would get the extra stuff (liner notes, art, whatever) with the CD. I would. All they have to do is add a little value and people will buy the CD's. The music itself doesn not have to cost anything.
For servers there's more new stuff than you can shake a stick at. There's a ton of ip routing features in it, and the firewall code was reworked. Very nice.
Of course, I still can't get my parallel port to work, but that's another story. I would say upgrading to 2.2 was very painful for me, but I learned quite a bit in the process.
I think because KDE positioned itself as a very businesslike desktop. It's more useful but also more boring than Gnome. Gnome is, well, a work of art.
I'm not going to knock KDE (it's awesome), but Gnome has me hooked. Warts and all.
You have to have backups, even it it's just copying the files to another drive or to another computer on the network. You have to use hosts.allow/hosts.deny, and you have to turn everything off you're not using - Red Hat is especially liberal with inetd by default. Bare minimum, or you will get cracked sooner or later if you on a leased line.
That said, I know a little how you feel. Someone used the mountd exploit on me a while back (RH 5.1), but was unable to install his 3l33t root shell. He left his .bash_history in my root directory too. The shamefulness of being hacked was made a little more bearable by seeing how clueless he was with bash. At worst the experience turned me on to all the stupid shit they try to do.
Needless to say I've learned a lot about security since then ...
Linux "can't do client stuff"? Huh? It can do anything at all. In fact, you could share a single PC among three or four users with xterms (once people get into this idea xterms should become hideously cheap) and mount the $HOMEs via smb/nfs/coda (has anyone played with coda yet?) from the central server. Beautiful. Having a P2-500 PC on everyone's desk is a total waste. Linux would make the best client OS ever.
Besides, I heard that BeOS has no filesystem security - is this true? If it is it has no place in a modern business.
Everytime I hear something like this it gives me such a warm fuzzy feeling to use linux and know this sort of thing just cannot happen to me.
Noteable quotes:
Sorry for shouting, but, Rob, you need am icon just for stories about cluelessness.
I would suggest a graphic that looks like this:
12:00
but blinking on and off (like on the VCR's)
It doesn't really matter what major you have; CS would be good, but they won't teach you the applications you need to know, or networking, or any of that stuff. Buy the ORA book on TCP/IP for starts, perl, sql are probably the most useful languages. And you need to know hardware. You certainly don't need a CS degree to be a sysadmin, a few of the right CS classes will most definitely help.
I loved my college years and I would not trade the time spent there for any 9-5 job.
9-5 = yuck.
Secondly, most of you guys are going for tech degrees which are, frankly, boring in terms of the curriculum you can take; most of those degrees are pretty much mapped out for you with no room for philosophy, music, literature, languages. Technical folks seem to completely ignore the liberal arts curriculum, which is really what an education is all about.
Please read Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind for an excellent analysis of education today. If you hate college, or are a technical person, please read this book.
College is most definitely neccesary. Well, if you are interested in learning anything, anyway. You can certainly learn programming and computers on your own (I did; I didn't study anything computer related in school), but you'll be cheating only yourself without a liberal education.
I depend on his drivers every day. And they kick flaming butt. Way to go!
What about medicine? A shining example of technology introducing and creating problems ... mdeicine has, for example, greatly increased the lifespan of those who can afford treatment, but it hasn't addressed the quality of that life. So we have seniors living in nursing homes and people stuck on machines for years, living pathetic meaninless existences.