I really can't think of any situation where too much choice is a bad thing. If you're intimidated, and don't know where to start, take the recommendation of a friend or a co-worker or just pick something at random, and be confident that most of the knowledge that you pick up along the way will be transferrable to a different distro/system when or if you decide to do it.
What really bothers me about what I see on articles about "linux on the desktop" or "why people should switch to linux" or "how can we get people to switch" is that everywhere people are saying that we should scrap this in favor of the other thing, standardize on this program or library. I happen to like the choices we have. Decentralization increases resilience, and ensures that you aren't locked into something undesireable. Standardization I would think is the reason that most people leave other operating systems to begin with.
I think that the open source community has proven itself to be self-correcting and evolution seems to happen in a timely and stable way (think of the recent GNOME->KDE agreement on UI behavior), so participate and have fun, and don't worry so much (or work to change) the things that bother you. There are a million differerent programs for different purposes for good reasons, its so that you can have the right tool for the job. I think that a lot of people who are learning about linux have only used a hammer, so all of the problems they see are nails. (If I remember who said that I'd give them credit)
I guess what I'm saying is a kinder reiteration of the classic elitist open source attitude: Quit complaining and start working.
Didn't you know that the corporations are rewriting the constitution? The preamble goes something like this:
We the corporations of the United States, in order to form a more profitiable economy for our shareholders, increase our bottom line, protect our corporate interests, ensure the protection of our intellectual property, have full control to abuse our environment, and secure the enslavement of the common people as mindless consumers, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United States of America.
Aren't you proud to be an american in this day and age? I sure am.
What I would really like to see is NFS over TCP server support, but I doubt that its going to happen, even though it can be much faster and reduce the load on the server. I think that this is because people are transitioning to AFS instead. NFSv4 would be nice too, but I guess I should quit bitching and start coding:)
I'm using these for a nice ~2TB raid unit for my group. Its _much_ cheaper than going with a SCSI only solution, and as far as reliability of IDE drives go, that's why you have RAID.
Exactly, the article is just running you through a variation on the standard "why" lateral thinking exercise. The idea is to think of different ways of reorganizing a pattern so that you can make more use of the information that you're given. Sounds like he was just trying to rile the peasants up for his own amusement as well.
Another good idea would be to also send a copy of this letter to the FCC or some other government organization. If a letter writing campaign like this is started, we have to make sure that the government has evidence flaunted in their face of the decisions that people are making. If this is not done the recording companies will just blame their lost sales on more piracy. I'd say they're doing it already.
This story on adbusters conveys the same sentiments... its called "The History of America" and is an excerpt from a book I just bought after reading the article.
http://adbusters.org/magazine/28/usa.html
Actually... if you:
cat/bin/laden >/dev/null
then/bin/laden would still be there with its original contents.
if you cat/dev/null >/bin/laden, then its contents will be gone, which of course is the desired result.
I'm sure that you could work for an upstanding organization like the RIAA. I hear that they pay very well for anyone with _any_ programming experience to help them.
Their recruiters just can't seem to get ahold of any programmers these days... Can't imagine why...
Sorry, don't want to pick nits, but it's your job that should be on the line if you can't just look at your IT department and justify spending money on it. There's something called productivity. Technology itself's ultimate goal is to minimize work and make processes more efficient.
So you should be looking at area's where a task is currently done manually. Look for some sort of data entry that could be database driven and automated via web forms. Keeping track of company inventory, or having an email and web based trouble-ticket/ call tracking system, are examples. Integrating two or more different databases that have grown up over the years so they can be administered and used together through the same application is another.
Desktop PC's should be the least of your worries as a CTO. It's really a trivial mantter. If someone _needs_ a new computer, then you buy one, just like you buy white out and printer paper. Its a tool, and without it most people can't function in a business. You should be wowing your bosses with integration and automation, not by questioning the need for new computers for staff. I'd say that it should be pretty apparent when a slow/outdated/broken computer needs replacement/upgrades/repairs, and if it isn't, perhaps that's why no one is willing to buy people new ones.
First let me say that I own a shotgun myself for hunting purposes and that my ideal gun control laws are those which promote responsible ownership and education about guns, and that's about it. Statisics show that violent crimes such as murder and rape go down in a well armed public. And that's a Good Thing (TM)
About 49 Percent of weapons made are non-hunting weapons. (I'm calling rifles and shotguns hunting weapons) This doesn't even account for the possiblilty of people owning illegal guns or using hunting weapons for non hunting purposes. (and as you probably know, rifles aren't strictly hunting weapons, even though I'm assuming so when coming up with a percentage) Now what are non-hunting weapons used for? Self defense is about all I can think of. People don't just own guns for no reason. Sure, there is sport use. However, no one that I know who owns a non-hunting weapon uses it strictly for sport, there's always self defense as a motivation to own and practice with their weapon. So, we've established that more than half of all weapons sold are for non-hunting purposes. What's left? Illegal uses and self defense, both include killing people, whether or not it's legal or illegal, voluntary or neccessary.
Furthermore, these statistics are pre sept 11. and we can probably assume that self defense motivation has increased in the populus.
Some more interesting gun facts: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/firearms/ facts: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/firearms/publications.htm
Actually, you should be the one opening your eyes to a bigger picture.
Diluting the percieved crime is the best way to find the parties who are most culpable. The people who are at fault in this case are the ones who _pirate_ the movie and use the tool that John wrote for non-legal purposes, not those people who want to watch a dvd on their damn linux box. What this kid did was not (or should not be) illegal. What people are using his tool for is illegal. You can't imprison someone for creating something that "might" be used for illegal purposes, if their intent and wish for developing that tool was for something that should be perfectly legal. (watching a DVD that you purchased with your own money).
Diluting this issue is exactly what should be done, because we don't charge gunsmiths with murder. (Even though guns see their most widest use in killing people)
Actually, you can't copy a video dvd straight to a dvd-r. There are size constraints as well as a small ring of data near the hole in the dvd that contain the encryption key and cannot be copied. You have to rip the DVD with a tool like decss first, and then play around with it to get it to burn properly and play properly on a dvd-r.
Six months ago, I sent a call-to-action to Microsoft's 50,000 employees, outlining what I believe is the highest priority for the company and for our industry over the next decade: building a Trustworthy Computing environment for customers that is as reliable as the electricity that powers our homes and businesses today.
Those utility companies are sure reliable and responsible...
Hey microsoft... I've got some enron stock to sell you...
Yeah... I agree completely. I have pacbell, and I pay extra for 5 static IP's. When I originally set up, they screwed up my order and gave me PPPoE. I called them up and they wanted to know why I needed something other than PPPoE. I told them that I have political reasons against running PPPoE and the sales rep laughed pretty hard (It turned out that he was a linux newbie). Pacbell (in my experience) has been pretty good about customer service and has had good reliability, at least in my area.(Sacramento)
They still throttle bandwidth, block incoming ports 80 and 25 even though they deny it, and have pretty crappy customer service, so they're pretty useless anyways. I've switched to DSL and would never go back to cable.
There are lots of dns txt record easter eggs out there. I remember that some website (was it 2600) had decss in it for a while. You can do: > dig txt foobar.com Funny that this came up today. Yesterday I put a silly easter egg in a dns txt record of unixboxen.(com|net|org).
If you look at the slides the presentation is basically comparing the development process between NT 3.5 and win2k, and illustrating how less efficient and bulky the process was. The presenter seems pretty biast that the "NT 3.5 way" was much better than the "Win2k way" even though most people find win2k as the better operating system. This is the point that I am making.
I'm a linux user, but most MS people I know hail win2k as the best microsoft OS ever. So this presentation seems to be kind of strange, pointing out things (increased build time, developers/testers) that illogically seem to create a better OS.
Slashdot Mirror
I really can't think of any situation where too much choice is a bad thing. If you're intimidated, and don't know where to start, take the recommendation of a friend or a co-worker or just pick something at random, and be confident that most of the knowledge that you pick up along the way will be transferrable to a different distro/system when or if you decide to do it.
What really bothers me about what I see on articles about "linux on the desktop" or "why people should switch to linux" or "how can we get people to switch" is that everywhere people are saying that we should scrap this in favor of the other thing, standardize on this program or library. I happen to like the choices we have. Decentralization increases resilience, and ensures that you aren't locked into something undesireable. Standardization I would think is the reason that most people leave other operating systems to begin with.
I think that the open source community has proven itself to be self-correcting and evolution seems to happen in a timely and stable way (think of the recent GNOME->KDE agreement on UI behavior), so participate and have fun, and don't worry so much (or work to change) the things that bother you. There are a million differerent programs for different purposes for good reasons, its so that you can have the right tool for the job. I think that a lot of people who are learning about linux have only used a hammer, so all of the problems they see are nails. (If I remember who said that I'd give them credit)
I guess what I'm saying is a kinder reiteration of the classic elitist open source attitude: Quit complaining and start working.
Didn't you know that the corporations are rewriting the constitution? The preamble goes something like this:
We the corporations of the United States, in order to form a more profitiable economy for our shareholders, increase our bottom line, protect our corporate interests, ensure the protection of our intellectual property, have full control to abuse our environment, and secure the enslavement of the common people as mindless consumers, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United States of America.
Aren't you proud to be an american in this day and age? I sure am.
What I would really like to see is NFS over TCP server support, but I doubt that its going to happen, even though it can be much faster and reduce the load on the server. I think that this is because people are transitioning to AFS instead. NFSv4 would be nice too, but I guess I should quit bitching and start coding :)
There is almost no legal, high quality content available on the internet. -Sen. Ernest Hollings D-S.C.
I'm using these for a nice ~2TB raid unit for my group. Its _much_ cheaper than going with a SCSI only solution, and as far as reliability of IDE drives go, that's why you have RAID.
Exactly, the article is just running you through a variation on the standard "why" lateral thinking exercise. The idea is to think of different ways of reorganizing a pattern so that you can make more use of the information that you're given. Sounds like he was just trying to rile the peasants up for his own amusement as well.
Right... So you agreed with effectively signing away your fourth ammendment rights?
If anyone hasn't read it...
o f-Mel.html
The story of Mel:
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/The-Story-
Another good idea would be to also send a copy of this letter to the FCC or some other government organization. If a letter writing campaign like this is started, we have to make sure that the government has evidence flaunted in their face of the decisions that people are making. If this is not done the recording companies will just blame their lost sales on more piracy. I'd say they're doing it already.
We could also go for a Boston CD party : )
This story on adbusters conveys the same sentiments... its called "The History of America" and is an excerpt from a book I just bought after reading the article.
http://adbusters.org/magazine/28/usa.html
I'll join in and bring my two parrots...
Actually... if you: /bin/laden > /dev/null /bin/laden would still be there with its original contents. /dev/null > /bin/laden, then its contents will be gone, which of course is the desired result.
cat
then
if you cat
cat /dev/null > /bin/laden
:- )
At least get it right
Actually, you should RTFA. Elcomsoft sold the product, not Sklyarov. He just researched it and programmed it, he didn't sell it. Quit spreading FUD.
I'm sure that you could work for an upstanding organization like the RIAA. I hear that they pay very well for anyone with _any_ programming experience to help them.
Their recruiters just can't seem to get ahold of any programmers these days... Can't imagine why...
Sorry, don't want to pick nits, but it's your job that should be on the line if you can't just look at your IT department and justify spending money on it. There's something called productivity. Technology itself's ultimate goal is to minimize work and make processes more efficient.
So you should be looking at area's where a task is currently done manually. Look for some sort of data entry that could be database driven and automated via web forms. Keeping track of company inventory, or having an email and web based trouble-ticket/ call tracking system, are examples. Integrating two or more different databases that have grown up over the years so they can be administered and used together through the same application is another.
Desktop PC's should be the least of your worries as a CTO. It's really a trivial mantter. If someone _needs_ a new computer, then you buy one, just like you buy white out and printer paper. Its a tool, and without it most people can't function in a business. You should be wowing your bosses with integration and automation, not by questioning the need for new computers for staff. I'd say that it should be pretty apparent when a slow/outdated/broken computer needs replacement/upgrades/repairs, and if it isn't, perhaps that's why no one is willing to buy people new ones.
First let me say that I own a shotgun myself for hunting purposes and that my ideal gun control laws are those which promote responsible ownership and education about guns, and that's about it. Statisics show that violent crimes such as murder and rape go down in a well armed public. And that's a Good Thing (TM)
m
However lets look at the Annual Firearms Manufacturers And Export Report (2000)
About 49 Percent of weapons made are non-hunting weapons. (I'm calling rifles and shotguns hunting weapons) This doesn't even account for the possiblilty of people owning illegal guns or using hunting weapons for non hunting purposes. (and as you probably know, rifles aren't strictly hunting weapons, even though I'm assuming so when coming up with a percentage)
Now what are non-hunting weapons used for? Self defense is about all I can think of. People don't just own guns for no reason. Sure, there is sport use. However, no one that I know who owns a non-hunting weapon uses it strictly for sport, there's always self defense as a motivation to own and practice with their weapon.
So, we've established that more than half of all weapons sold are for non-hunting purposes. What's left? Illegal uses and self defense, both include killing people, whether or not it's legal or illegal, voluntary or neccessary.
Furthermore, these statistics are pre sept 11. and we can probably assume that self defense motivation has increased in the populus.
Some more interesting gun facts:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/firearms/ facts:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/firearms/publications.ht
Actually, you should be the one opening your eyes to a bigger picture.
Diluting the percieved crime is the best way to find the parties who are most culpable. The people who are at fault in this case are the ones who _pirate_ the movie and use the tool that John wrote for non-legal purposes, not those people who want to watch a dvd on their damn linux box. What this kid did was not (or should not be) illegal. What people are using his tool for is illegal. You can't imprison someone for creating something that "might" be used for illegal purposes, if their intent and wish for developing that tool was for something that should be perfectly legal. (watching a DVD that you purchased with your own money).
Diluting this issue is exactly what should be done, because we don't charge gunsmiths with murder. (Even though guns see their most widest use in killing people)
Actually, you can't copy a video dvd straight to a dvd-r. There are size constraints as well as a small ring of data near the hole in the dvd that contain the encryption key and cannot be copied. You have to rip the DVD with a tool like decss first, and then play around with it to get it to burn properly and play properly on a dvd-r.
Six months ago, I sent a call-to-action to Microsoft's 50,000 employees, outlining what I believe is the highest priority for the company and for our industry over the next decade: building a Trustworthy Computing environment for customers that is as reliable as the electricity that powers our homes and businesses today.
Those utility companies are sure reliable and responsible...
Hey microsoft... I've got some enron stock to sell you...
Yeah... I agree completely. I have pacbell, and I pay extra for 5 static IP's.
When I originally set up, they screwed up my order and gave me PPPoE. I called them up and they wanted to know why I needed something other than PPPoE. I told them that I have political reasons against running PPPoE and the sales rep laughed pretty hard (It turned out that he was a linux newbie). Pacbell (in my experience) has been pretty good about customer service and has had good reliability, at least in my area.(Sacramento)
They still throttle bandwidth, block incoming ports 80 and 25 even though they deny it, and have pretty crappy customer service, so they're pretty useless anyways. I've switched to DSL and would never go back to cable.
There are lots of dns txt record easter eggs out there. I remember that some website (was it 2600) had decss in it for a while. You can do:
> dig txt foobar.com
Funny that this came up today. Yesterday I put a silly easter egg in a dns txt record of unixboxen.(com|net|org).
If you look at the slides the presentation is basically comparing the development process between NT 3.5 and win2k, and illustrating how less efficient and bulky the process was. The presenter seems pretty biast that the "NT 3.5 way" was much better than the "Win2k way" even though most people find win2k as the better operating system. This is the point that I am making.
I'm a linux user, but most MS people I know hail win2k as the best microsoft OS ever. So this presentation seems to be kind of strange, pointing out things (increased build time, developers/testers) that illogically seem to create a better OS.