I think your wrong. I think you're falling prey to the Liberalist B.S. that is being shoveled out about how we are only there for the oil and all that classic B.S.
Prove it with verifiable facts or shut up.
The British Prime Minister, US President, and others have changed their views on terrorism since the World Trade Center was attacked the second time. What was once a practice relegated to being delivered against small groups of people or identifiable enemies has become something much larger with even larger implications in the future.
There are two schools of thought on this, that this changes things, or it doesn't. Some believe that a terrorist attack killing in excess of 3,000 people is no different from kill 12 in a bus or 10 in a coffee shop. Others believe that their is a significant difference to this. The US and UK see this as being different enough to respond differently.
From what little information I have received on this matter, and admittedly much of it is likely biased in one direction or the other, it appears that Iraq has a population of people who like the idea of a Democracy but seem largely unwilling to take the risks themselves or are unconvinced that a Democracy is really the winning team.
It's easy to "denounced" someone but it's much harder to take action against them. And even the slashdot community is guilty of this. So am I.
The most impressive thing that we saw regarding the US attack was how the last plane failed. They didn't fail because they were shot down by the military. They failed because the common population that was on that plane understood that it was the duty of protecting the country fell on their hands and that they had no other option then to die cowards.
I'm waiting for a civil action in Iraq of the same caliber. I'm even waiting for a civil action in Isreal of the same type.
The only way Iraq will ever become stabilized and clear of US and UK military is if they are willing to take up their own fight and this has to be done at a level no seen in generations. It must be to the last man women and child.
Examine the history of the US. We have taken up the belief that our Freedoms are the most valuable thing we have and that protecting them means taking enough risks that you might die for those beliefs.
Sorry to criticize Iraq, but they are really coming off as a bunch of lame ducks on this one. They complain about occupation, they complain about terrorists, but I don't see anyone doing anything about it unless they are hired to do so. Is there anyone taking action on a more gut level.
Iraq must own their government. This is probably new to them since they have not had this opportunity of self direction. Quite possibly never in history of this part of the world if not the last 40 years. Perhaps this is too new for them to embrace.
I was weened on Slackware and think it's still one of the premier distro's. From what I have been able to find it seems that this is something that can be treated successfully, but it takes prompt action and perseverence. So if the next few slackware releases are a little late, please try to be understanding.
It's possible, but even the old music that I still have from that era they prefer, including the side B tracks.
You have a valid point, but as stated by others, the point of interest is that they music which has real staying power with them is all pre-1990 era music and everything after that has more of a "passing fancy" or true POP effect on them than anything else.
I'm always looking for a good tune on the radio, but there's so precious little out there these days that is any good I'm getting disgusted. And before you condemn me as one who is too old to appreciate the new music, I do happen to find some tunes that I like. And I don't think Eminem is the same Old School as The Who or Roxy Music. So please, cast that arguement aside. I'm trying to keep an open mind.
They didn't re-release old movies on regular basis. They did manage to attempt a few remakes, like King Kong, but that's about the only one that comes to mind.
But when you consider how they are re-releasing movies that were issued in the 70's and 80's and in the 70's and 80's they were not re-releasing movies from the 50's and 60's (with the one exception of The Jungle Book) it really doeesn't require any substantiation beyond this.
Dealing Spam is like Dealing Crack. Do it for a few years, spend a decade in jail and when you get out, you have multi millions at your disposal.
I've been working for 20 years and I don't have any millions to show for it.
When you look at the econimics of it, there is absolutely no reason why any spammer should even flinch at a 9 year sentence. It's still a bargain.
But you have to seperate the morality of the business practices apart from the economics of the business model to get this to work. Personally I don't think there is anything you can do with these people to convince them not to Deal in Spam that will appear fair in the eyes of the legal system or at the very least, pass the UN criteria for Crimes against Humanity.
I think it would be far more effective for them to wear a scarlet S on their clothes and to have their identities posted on the internet just like some convicted pedophile.
That at least might bring to their homes the pain that their Business generates for the rest of us.
One might even argue that this is a violation of free speech in that there is a right to speak, but not a requirement to listen. Maybe we can get spamming classified as a Hate Crime
No, music is pretty much for shit these days. My kids are entering their teen years and have found that they really like music. But the irony is the type of music that they really like.
1960-1980 Rock. Any current bands (eg: Blink 182) they only like a couple of songs and those preferences quickly fad away.
But they both keep coming back and listening to the older music that's on the Classic Rock music stations.
Current music sucks. It's an excellent example of monitization of art. That is to say, they practice of Art has been so heavily influenced by the monitary potential of art that all art is viewed not on it's artistic content, but on it's monitary potential. This started with the manufactured Boy Bands like Back Street Boys and N'SYNC. Even SouthPark figured this one out years ago.
Take some star like Britney Spears. Her first three songs showed some style and some actual singing talent. Now about the only thing that helps her revenue stream are her boobs. Her singing is much lower quality and poorer content than it ever was, second only to her ever decreasing investment on clothing.
I've been hearing about the RIAA bitching for decades and everyone has consistently replies, "But your music sucks so bad, why should be pay money for it?"
Now the interesting thing will be if this will be applied to the MPAA and the problems that they have with movies. After all, re-releasing Apocolypse Now and The Godfather are a sure sign that they can't do anything right anymore. Not all movies suck, but the percentage of good movies has dropped well below what it used to be.
We could only succed in doing this if we made a real effort to reduce our power consumption to begin with.
For starters, how many LED clocks do you really need in the house?
And how many appliances would we live with if they didn't have warm-start circuitry to allow for a quicker power up?
Read any article on going off grid and these are two major hurdles. Typically you have to replace most of your appliances before you can get the power consumption down to a realistic level.
You can get Epia Via boards for $99 but I would assume if you were doing any kind of volume you could easily the the case thrown in and come in $100. Save the hard drive expense by going with LTSP.
Allowing only registered executables to run could be set up to prevent such things. Microsoft signs their patches and programs too, but no regular user will ever check.
Incorporate such functions in the OS or GUI. Harass the user whenever an executable or shared library is introduced to the system: "Here are the certifications, do you trust this?"
You're argument is flawed. You assume that at any time the Administrator will be approached with legitimate code and asked to install/upgrade their system. Even if this is not the Administrator doing it you're still making the same error.
The simpler method of keeping the code base secure is to use the installation tools (apt-get for debian or rpm up2date tools) and only those tools for updating anything on the system. That way, if you get a solicitation for updates (legal or not) then you would use the systam update tools to acquire and manage that package update.
spouting off about signature systems that ask about if you trust something or not is going to be pretty useless considering all you have to do is keep up the game trying to convince idiot users that they can trust your package...
They don't need to go into something like airbags. That's an ASIC environment all the way. What they will do is provide an interface for updating the ASIC EPROM code base for things like Engine Crontrolers.
I'm a lot worried that OnStar will doggedly assume that:
Their competitors are Automotive companies and not Software Industry participants
Refuse to consider something this flexible because it will add $2 to each vehicle.
Subsequently they will find themselves competing with a product that has them completely outclassed.
While cost is always a consideration to the manufacturer, I've never seen a product supplied for anything near true cost when provided as an option to the vehicle. For example, ABS, Airbags, and Remote Keyless Entries typically have a >200% profit margin attached to them at the time of sale. If they sold them for the real cost of the product they could add a lot of value to the vehicle for not much price, better insurance towards making a final sale.
But Automotive companies don't think that way. Most American companies that I've had contact with are so heavily bent on making money at any cost that they often forget these indirect retail generating value added aspects of their product development.
This is a very narrow view on what is happening and will happen with a very large number of jobs in the Global Economic structure that has arrived since the 1990's. If you want, you can consider this whole process a Canary in a Coal Mine example of what is going to happen to most jobs in the US and all other first world nations.
There are still blacksmiths in the world today, but the economy supports a much lower density of blacksmiths today in the nation. The only way that the few blacksmiths today can manage to survive is if they are very good and have more of an artistic quality to their nature than a pure smithy skillset.
The only way any American developers will survive is if they have exceptional skills that makes tham capable of competing on a much more competative market or are able to find a density of developers low enough in the local area that they are able to do all the customization work necessary to support the local demand of the software industry.
But the days of every geek making 6 digits a year have long past. It's just as well if you ask me. Now the only people who will code are the people who do it because they love it, not because they can get paid for it. I've run into a lot of pretty useless individuals who have moved into software development because they took a 6 week course in MCSE or JAVA and got picked up by some contract house.
The people that will be left working on software development in countries like US, Canada, and most of the European nations that participate in the Global Economy will follow this pattern.
Well first of all, it does mention that the survey was from companies and not home users. Additionally I am pretty certain that XP is being pushed as the solution for companies as well has home use with a discontinuation of NT4 and W2K. This negates your first statement that:
NT and Win2k are being run by people with more of a clue than those running XP. XP was aimed more at the home market while NT and 2k were not nearly as much.
Given this evidence, it would seem that the clueless users downloading virus worms and poor hardware choices (see your second paragraph) are the same idiots that have their hardware selected by an IT organization and have their network firewalled against such worms, virus, and other software related issues. It is also generally the responsibility that the company provide some form of relevant antivirus software on the company supplied hardware.
So, in short, I think the conclusions that can be reasonably considered here are as follows:
You are highly biased towards MSFT and some attempt at offloading the problems to the end users.
NT fails less and similarly as you get to newer software you have more failures, meaning that MSFT has been getting worse, not better.
The first statement should be regarded as rather bogus because these are company users and not the famously incapable Aunt Tillie. If there is a problem with the user base here, then it's a problem that must be addressed by the company, unless you are entirely made up of IT GURUS of the most Extreme, including that really hot secretary at the front desk.
But that second statement is also highly biased. NT does not support nearly as much hardware as W2K/XP might. It's also likely the NT is running in an environment of, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
The reason that hardware support variations is so important is because many crashes are the result of poorly written/tested device drivers. That is to say, NT is unlikely to support many USB PVRs whereas XP is expected to support the USB PVR de jour which has a total invested development time of maybe 6 hours. Contrarily, not too many companies would invest in such inherently unstable software/hardware...we hope.
However, given the tremendous amount of PR that has been invested in making MSFT Windows XP the most robust, stable, and secure operating system to ever come out of Redmond makes me wonder what would happen if they actually spent the money on trying to do the right thing and make some software that doesn't suck.
And yes, I'm biased away from Windows and everything Microsoft. But I think they deserve a fair and balanced evaluation in both the pro and con arguements. After all, I've been using Windows and not-Windows long enough to know the truth about Windows.
If Windows didn't have such a strong budget on PR, FUD, and SCO how long do you think they would be able to retain 50% market share?
Not too far off here. But dishwasher solvents might be a bit harsh. I would use a smaller amount of soap than you might want to use.
When I worked at Harris many years ago we used to clean all kinds of electronics in a dishwasher. It worked extremely well except that it had a tendency to strip off the ink printing. But other than that, there was no damage done.
However, I would steer away of anything related to mechanical parts (hard drives et al) as it will strip out the lubricants.
We would end up certifying Debian, at least a specific subset of Debian packages, because our policy is not to do development outside of Debian except for configuration and temporary fixes.
What extra does your configuration provide that Debian does not? What's the value added, besides $upport options and Service Level Agreements?
I think you are missing the entire point behind UserLinux and what they are doing here. If you read up on some of the essays by Perens et al you will find that they have an answer for this.
Open Source and Free software (compatable with Debian) has demonstrated the capability to replace closed source software in a great majority of the applications that a User or Business might require. For those areas where closed source software may still hold an advantage (financials?) the posit is that it is a matter of time before these areas of OpenSource/Free software shortcomings is closed and the entire Software landscape can be completed using OpenSource/Free software. Thereby removing any requirements for closed source software.
For many people and companies this is already the case, they just don't know it. So UserLinux is making the effort to provide those users and companies with working evidence that this is already the case and no longer an item for cocktail speculations.
I really don't think you would want to put much on a DynDNS network. After all, everything related to SMTP is automatically/dev/nulled by just about everyone in the world.
And to think, since they've done that, spam and viral infections on the internet have pretty much continue at pace.
I'm a disgruntled DynDNS user who can't send any email from my servers, even though they are legit.
Slashdot Mirror
Gosh, maybe they should take a lesson from the 1950's American Foreign Policies of trying to manipulate other peoples
Maybe it's time to go back to boycotts
I think your wrong. I think you're falling prey to the Liberalist B.S. that is being shoveled out about how we are only there for the oil and all that classic B.S.
Prove it with verifiable facts or shut up.
The British Prime Minister, US President, and others have changed their views on terrorism since the World Trade Center was attacked the second time. What was once a practice relegated to being delivered against small groups of people or identifiable enemies has become something much larger with even larger implications in the future.
There are two schools of thought on this, that this changes things, or it doesn't. Some believe that a terrorist attack killing in excess of 3,000 people is no different from kill 12 in a bus or 10 in a coffee shop. Others believe that their is a significant difference to this. The US and UK see this as being different enough to respond differently.
From what little information I have received on this matter, and admittedly much of it is likely biased in one direction or the other, it appears that Iraq has a population of people who like the idea of a Democracy but seem largely unwilling to take the risks themselves or are unconvinced that a Democracy is really the winning team.
It's easy to "denounced" someone but it's much harder to take action against them. And even the slashdot community is guilty of this. So am I.
The most impressive thing that we saw regarding the US attack was how the last plane failed. They didn't fail because they were shot down by the military. They failed because the common population that was on that plane understood that it was the duty of protecting the country fell on their hands and that they had no other option then to die cowards.
I'm waiting for a civil action in Iraq of the same caliber. I'm even waiting for a civil action in Isreal of the same type.
The only way Iraq will ever become stabilized and clear of US and UK military is if they are willing to take up their own fight and this has to be done at a level no seen in generations. It must be to the last man women and child.
Examine the history of the US. We have taken up the belief that our Freedoms are the most valuable thing we have and that protecting them means taking enough risks that you might die for those beliefs.
Sorry to criticize Iraq, but they are really coming off as a bunch of lame ducks on this one. They complain about occupation, they complain about terrorists, but I don't see anyone doing anything about it unless they are hired to do so. Is there anyone taking action on a more gut level.
Iraq must own their government. This is probably new to them since they have not had this opportunity of self direction. Quite possibly never in history of this part of the world if not the last 40 years. Perhaps this is too new for them to embrace.
It's when you fail to welcome your New Overlords that you might be considered a terrorist
Some details can be found here on what this is.
I was weened on Slackware and think it's still one of the premier distro's. From what I have been able to find it seems that this is something that can be treated successfully, but it takes prompt action and perseverence. So if the next few slackware releases are a little late, please try to be understanding.
You sound like you would like to smoke a lot of this weed as your contribution to the reduction of the problem...
It's possible, but even the old music that I still have from that era they prefer, including the side B tracks.
You have a valid point, but as stated by others, the point of interest is that they music which has real staying power with them is all pre-1990 era music and everything after that has more of a "passing fancy" or true POP effect on them than anything else.
I'm always looking for a good tune on the radio, but there's so precious little out there these days that is any good I'm getting disgusted. And before you condemn me as one who is too old to appreciate the new music, I do happen to find some tunes that I like. And I don't think Eminem is the same Old School as The Who or Roxy Music. So please, cast that arguement aside. I'm trying to keep an open mind.
They didn't re-release old movies on regular basis. They did manage to attempt a few remakes, like King Kong, but that's about the only one that comes to mind.
But when you consider how they are re-releasing movies that were issued in the 70's and 80's and in the 70's and 80's they were not re-releasing movies from the 50's and 60's (with the one exception of The Jungle Book) it really doeesn't require any substantiation beyond this.
Dealing Spam is like Dealing Crack. Do it for a few years, spend a decade in jail and when you get out, you have multi millions at your disposal.
I've been working for 20 years and I don't have any millions to show for it.
When you look at the econimics of it, there is absolutely no reason why any spammer should even flinch at a 9 year sentence. It's still a bargain.
But you have to seperate the morality of the business practices apart from the economics of the business model to get this to work. Personally I don't think there is anything you can do with these people to convince them not to Deal in Spam that will appear fair in the eyes of the legal system or at the very least, pass the UN criteria for Crimes against Humanity.
I think it would be far more effective for them to wear a scarlet S on their clothes and to have their identities posted on the internet just like some convicted pedophile.
That at least might bring to their homes the pain that their Business generates for the rest of us.
One might even argue that this is a violation of free speech in that there is a right to speak, but not a requirement to listen. Maybe we can get spamming classified as a Hate Crime
No, music is pretty much for shit these days. My kids are entering their teen years and have found that they really like music. But the irony is the type of music that they really like.
1960-1980 Rock. Any current bands (eg: Blink 182) they only like a couple of songs and those preferences quickly fad away.
But they both keep coming back and listening to the older music that's on the Classic Rock music stations.
Current music sucks. It's an excellent example of monitization of art. That is to say, they practice of Art has been so heavily influenced by the monitary potential of art that all art is viewed not on it's artistic content, but on it's monitary potential. This started with the manufactured Boy Bands like Back Street Boys and N'SYNC. Even SouthPark figured this one out years ago.
Take some star like Britney Spears. Her first three songs showed some style and some actual singing talent. Now about the only thing that helps her revenue stream are her boobs. Her singing is much lower quality and poorer content than it ever was, second only to her ever decreasing investment on clothing.
I've been hearing about the RIAA bitching for decades and everyone has consistently replies, "But your music sucks so bad, why should be pay money for it?"
Now the interesting thing will be if this will be applied to the MPAA and the problems that they have with movies. After all, re-releasing Apocolypse Now and The Godfather are a sure sign that they can't do anything right anymore. Not all movies suck, but the percentage of good movies has dropped well below what it used to be.
We could only succed in doing this if we made a real effort to reduce our power consumption to begin with.
For starters, how many LED clocks do you really need in the house?
And how many appliances would we live with if they didn't have warm-start circuitry to allow for a quicker power up?
Read any article on going off grid and these are two major hurdles. Typically you have to replace most of your appliances before you can get the power consumption down to a realistic level.
That's exactly what I was thinking about this one. napalm. Hard to be resistant to that.
You can get Epia Via boards for $99 but I would assume if you were doing any kind of volume you could easily the the case thrown in and come in $100. Save the hard drive expense by going with LTSP.
You're argument is flawed. You assume that at any time the Administrator will be approached with legitimate code and asked to install/upgrade their system. Even if this is not the Administrator doing it you're still making the same error.
The simpler method of keeping the code base secure is to use the installation tools (apt-get for debian or rpm up2date tools) and only those tools for updating anything on the system. That way, if you get a solicitation for updates (legal or not) then you would use the systam update tools to acquire and manage that package update.
spouting off about signature systems that ask about if you trust something or not is going to be pretty useless considering all you have to do is keep up the game trying to convince idiot users that they can trust your package...
They don't need to go into something like airbags. That's an ASIC environment all the way. What they will do is provide an interface for updating the ASIC EPROM code base for things like Engine Crontrolers.
I'm a lot worried that OnStar will doggedly assume that:
Subsequently they will find themselves competing with a product that has them completely outclassed.
While cost is always a consideration to the manufacturer, I've never seen a product supplied for anything near true cost when provided as an option to the vehicle. For example, ABS, Airbags, and Remote Keyless Entries typically have a >200% profit margin attached to them at the time of sale. If they sold them for the real cost of the product they could add a lot of value to the vehicle for not much price, better insurance towards making a final sale.
But Automotive companies don't think that way. Most American companies that I've had contact with are so heavily bent on making money at any cost that they often forget these indirect retail generating value added aspects of their product development.
This is a very narrow view on what is happening and will happen with a very large number of jobs in the Global Economic structure that has arrived since the 1990's. If you want, you can consider this whole process a Canary in a Coal Mine example of what is going to happen to most jobs in the US and all other first world nations.
There are still blacksmiths in the world today, but the economy supports a much lower density of blacksmiths today in the nation. The only way that the few blacksmiths today can manage to survive is if they are very good and have more of an artistic quality to their nature than a pure smithy skillset.
The only way any American developers will survive is if they have exceptional skills that makes tham capable of competing on a much more competative market or are able to find a density of developers low enough in the local area that they are able to do all the customization work necessary to support the local demand of the software industry.
But the days of every geek making 6 digits a year have long past. It's just as well if you ask me. Now the only people who will code are the people who do it because they love it, not because they can get paid for it. I've run into a lot of pretty useless individuals who have moved into software development because they took a 6 week course in MCSE or JAVA and got picked up by some contract house.
The people that will be left working on software development in countries like US, Canada, and most of the European nations that participate in the Global Economy will follow this pattern.
Never mind the speed. You can power your computer from a very small creek.
Think computerized water management systems that can run without the need for infrastructure deployment of electrical and data communication lines.
This, combined with micropower generation would give you remote management techniques.
I think it's pretty darn cool!
Linux has no software that requires it, except for the kernel.
180 days is typical for Linux be it at home or in the office.
Since switching to Debian I've never had a crash either.
Well first of all, it does mention that the survey was from companies and not home users. Additionally I am pretty certain that XP is being pushed as the solution for companies as well has home use with a discontinuation of NT4 and W2K. This negates your first statement that:
Given this evidence, it would seem that the clueless users downloading virus worms and poor hardware choices (see your second paragraph) are the same idiots that have their hardware selected by an IT organization and have their network firewalled against such worms, virus, and other software related issues. It is also generally the responsibility that the company provide some form of relevant antivirus software on the company supplied hardware.
So, in short, I think the conclusions that can be reasonably considered here are as follows:
The first statement should be regarded as rather bogus because these are company users and not the famously incapable Aunt Tillie. If there is a problem with the user base here, then it's a problem that must be addressed by the company, unless you are entirely made up of IT GURUS of the most Extreme, including that really hot secretary at the front desk.
But that second statement is also highly biased. NT does not support nearly as much hardware as W2K/XP might. It's also likely the NT is running in an environment of, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
The reason that hardware support variations is so important is because many crashes are the result of poorly written/tested device drivers. That is to say, NT is unlikely to support many USB PVRs whereas XP is expected to support the USB PVR de jour which has a total invested development time of maybe 6 hours. Contrarily, not too many companies would invest in such inherently unstable software/hardware...we hope.
However, given the tremendous amount of PR that has been invested in making MSFT Windows XP the most robust, stable, and secure operating system to ever come out of Redmond makes me wonder what would happen if they actually spent the money on trying to do the right thing and make some software that doesn't suck.
And yes, I'm biased away from Windows and everything Microsoft. But I think they deserve a fair and balanced evaluation in both the pro and con arguements. After all, I've been using Windows and not-Windows long enough to know the truth about Windows.
If Windows didn't have such a strong budget on PR, FUD, and SCO how long do you think they would be able to retain 50% market share?
Not too far off here. But dishwasher solvents might be a bit harsh. I would use a smaller amount of soap than you might want to use.
When I worked at Harris many years ago we used to clean all kinds of electronics in a dishwasher. It worked extremely well except that it had a tendency to strip off the ink printing. But other than that, there was no damage done.
However, I would steer away of anything related to mechanical parts (hard drives et al) as it will strip out the lubricants.
We would end up certifying Debian, at least a specific subset of Debian packages, because our policy is not to do development outside of Debian except for configuration and temporary fixes.
What extra does your configuration provide that Debian does not? What's the value added, besides $upport options and Service Level Agreements?
So UserLinux has the same requirements for free software that Debian has?
As a recent example, I won't find Sender-ID support in UserLinux?
What?
You want to call it, "ThemLinux"? That'll go far...
I think you are missing the entire point behind UserLinux and what they are doing here. If you read up on some of the essays by Perens et al you will find that they have an answer for this.
Open Source and Free software (compatable with Debian) has demonstrated the capability to replace closed source software in a great majority of the applications that a User or Business might require. For those areas where closed source software may still hold an advantage (financials?) the posit is that it is a matter of time before these areas of OpenSource/Free software shortcomings is closed and the entire Software landscape can be completed using OpenSource/Free software. Thereby removing any requirements for closed source software.
For many people and companies this is already the case, they just don't know it. So UserLinux is making the effort to provide those users and companies with working evidence that this is already the case and no longer an item for cocktail speculations.
I really don't think you would want to put much on a DynDNS network. After all, everything related to SMTP is automatically /dev/nulled by just about everyone in the world.
And to think, since they've done that, spam and viral infections on the internet have pretty much continue at pace.
I'm a disgruntled DynDNS user who can't send any email from my servers, even though they are legit.