Nope, I'm going to gripe to the software vendor who wrote the buggy, shitty, non-compliant software that's being broken by SP2, because if the vendor had written it according to published Best Practices documents, SP2 wouldn't break it. Yes, this includes certain Microsoft apps as well, but if SP2 breaks it, it needed fixing anyway. I'm all for it, as SP2 is finally going to make app vendors start paying attention to security when writing their apps.
But then again, you're on my Foe list because you've shown your Linux zealot colors in the past, so I can be assured you're leave no good Microsoft initiative unpunished. If SP2 didn't break anything, you'd have complained it was too weak. If it breaks lots of things, you complain it's too invasive. That's why you're irrelevant to this issue -- because no matter what was going to happen, your mind was already made up. There's a phrase for that, it's called "narrow minded."
Umm...ever heard of registry key permissions? These keep malware from altering system-critical stuff. SP2 includes tweaks in that direction as well, in addition to the permission restrictions already applied to non-admin WinXP users. You need Power User or Administrator rights to modify the registry in almost all cases. Those keys that any old user can modify are not critical to the system.
Look, the situation here is no different than Linux. If you're running as root and something decides to fsck with your config files, you're just as screwed as if you were running with admin rights on a Windows box and something fscked with your registry. If Windows is a broken door in this respect, so is Linux -- in the hands of a stupid user, that is.
Contrast the following two comments from your response:
Perhaps your sysadmin skills are lacking. I've never had an issue with using 'emerge --pretend -uD world' to see what will be changed,
and
The fact that a M$ service pack (which replaces M$ only software) can blow up some systems up here and there (one of the reasons why they added system restore points to service pack installations) just gives you an idea of how hard it is to maintain the Windows operating environment.
So, if someone messes up a Linux "service pack" application, they're an idiot and Linux shares no blame, but if they muck up a Windows box, Microsoft is totally to blame. Yup, that makes all the sense in the world...if you're a Linux zealot.
I feel sorry for the M$ developers that have to deal with dll hell and have to worry about retaining ancient compatability with old libraries..
I'll remember that next time I can't get an RPM to install due to dependency hell. That's just so much more fun than DLL hell, isn't it? Sure, I can mitigate that with apt-get and Synaptic package manager, but likewise Windows DLL hell hasn't existed in a long, long time due to built-in Windows DLL version control. Again, you're judging current Microsoft products based upon what they were producing almost ten years ago. Clearly have no idea whatsoever about how much improved Microsoft's current product line is. Perhaps you should research the things you're criticizing before you criticize them.
It's been a while so I might have the numbers wrong...NT 4 SP4 was issued to fix NTFS which was horribly crippled by NT 4 SP3. I suffered through that.
Um, I got news for you: NT4 was released around 1996. The service pack in question was released prior to the year 2000. The product you're speaking of isn't available for sale, isn't current, and isn't even officially supported any longer. We're more than halfway through the year 2004. Isn't it time people quit judging the quality of Microsoft software by what happened almost ten years ago? Would it be fair if I judged Linux's fitness for a particular task based upon a bad experience I had with the 1.x kernel back in 1997? No, but I constantly hear Slashdotters harp about how awful Win95/NT4 was and how nice Linux kernel 2.4/2.6 is when Linux clearly has the benefit of several more years of development under its belt. If you're going to castigate Microsoft for something, castigate current products by comparing them with current alternatives. Doing anything else is comparing apples to oranges.
If such stuff came from Microsoft, it'd be called FUD, but since it comes from Linux lovers on Slashdot, it gets modded +1 Insightful. What a way to be fair and unbiased, huh?
I think most people have an intutive sense that we are, indeed, alone in the universe.
Recent polls in North America do not agree with your conclusion, but you're entitled to your own opinion the same as everyone else is.
However, before you write off extra-terrestrial life simply because we haven't found them yet, consider this: we've been looking only for less than a century, yet the universe is almost immeasurably older than that. And, to quote Carl Sagan, the universe is a pretty big place, with billions and billions of stars per galaxy and potentially billions of galaxies. The odds are actually stacked in favor of life occuring elsewhere, much like the old adage of an infinite number of monkeys hammering away on an infinite number of typewriters will eventually produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. It is improbable, but not impossible, and improbability is reduced by the tremendous scale of the universe.
Although it's fashionable right now in intellecutal circles to conclude "gee, we haven't found them, so they must not exist!", such a view is short sighted and myopic (this applies equally well to WMD's and aliens). If you were challenged with finding a particular grain of sand on the entire Eastern seaboard, and you failed to find it in a year, would you then conclude the grain of sand did not exist? Only if you had your mind made up to begin with.
Here's a relevant excerpt since I doubt you have the integrety to back up your bluster with actual action and take the time to read the thing:
Actually, I have read it, or at least the relevant portions of it. You quote it correctly, but you misunderstand exactly what a "finding of fact" is. It is not a verdict, and if you'll check this article commenting on the finding of fact, you'll realize that.
I took the liberty of actually calling the Judge's office on this matter (his Chambers phone number is listed). His office confirmed that this is not a legal verdict and has no weight, it is merely a finding of fact that can be used to determine a verdict.
So, legally, Microsoft has still never been determined to be a monopoly. Judge Jackson's FoF letter is evidence, but it is not a ruling. So, while you've made an interesting literary diversion for me, you still have not found a verdict or ruling calling Microsoft a monopoly. Please try again, this is starting to get interesting.
Where you even alive a few years ago? At all? The old Netscape vs Microsoft ruling *did* find Microsoft to be a monopoly. Absolutely.
Prove it. Put up a link to the court document that specifically calls Microsoft a monopoly. Do it and I'll post a retraction and an apology. If you can't do it, you owe me a retraction and an apology.
And no, 100% marketshare is not the definition of a monopoly.
Main Entry: monopoly Pronunciation: m&-'nä-p(&-)lE Function: noun Inflected Form(s): plural -lies Etymology: Latin monopolium, from Greek monopOlion, from mon- + pOlein to sell 1 : exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action 2 : exclusive possession or control 3 : a commodity controlled by one party 4 : one that has a monopoly
Oops! What's that I find? You're wrong again, it seems. So sad. Please post your retraction and apology and I'll feel a little less guilty about pointing out your deficiency.
So, to put it in your own words, "you're either misinformed, exaggerating, or outright lying. I hope it's the first case."
Since you've been unable to post anything remotely resembling evidence to back up your assertion, it is you that fits this question. So far, the answer seems to be option number three, but please feel free to prove me wrong.
What does "best" mean here? It doesn't mean "best for the consumer".
Exactly! "Best" is a nebulous term that can mean anything, but in this case, "best" means whatever product the consumers decided to adopt. Microsoft Office is "best" in the category of being the most successful product suite in the history of computing. Is that "best" for consumers? Well, they're buying it in droves...what do you think? It's either the "best" in its class or there is no viable competitor. Since competition exists in the form of things like Wordperfect suite, or OpenOffice, or StarOffice, or all the others, clearly consumers have chosen Office as the "best" of the pack. Whether it's "best" for you is irrelevant to the discussion; you representing an insignificant fraction of buying power. The majority has chosen Office as the "best" by numbers alone. Everything else is secondary.
I'll ignore the personal insults. I'm used to that kind of thing and worse from M$ apologists. Name calling is integral to enslavement, so those who wish to enslave will always have offensive mouths.
Coming from someone who started out your original reply with a subject line of "Re:It was unusual, dumbass," this is just rich. It's rare to find someone so oblivious to their own hypocrisy, but you've definitely found a hallowed place in that niche. Apparently you wish to enslave just as badly as those you're accusing of being oppressors and such. Let me guess: you're voting for Kerry or Nader this year, right? You sound like someone who can appreciate talking out of both sides of your mouth at the same time. Pot, meet kettle, you two seem to already know each other quite well.
I was going to comment on the rest of your poorly-spelled and grammatically-challenged post, but it just degenerates into the standard the-rich-are-evil-and-are-holding-down-the-common- man class warfare drivel. You're envious, plain and simple. Either that or you're feeling deficient because you are unable to succeed the way others around you have. Why bother with introspection when it's so much easier to just find someone else to blame?
You can reply if you want, but it's not going to get much attention from me unless you stop sounding like some tin-foil-beanie lunatic with a class-warfare chip on the shoulder. Why don't you go polish up your Socialist Party membership card and dream about the days when all companies are abolished and truly classless, "common man" society exists! Ah, Utopia!
Are you really this naive or are you just trying to be entertaining?
Of course, since the courts of the land has deemed MS to a monopoly, there is little relation between MS and the free market.
Umm, sorry, but I have to call BS. Find me a court decision where Microsoft was decreed to be a "monopoly." You'll fail, because no such thing ever happened. The DOJ is investigating MS for unfair competition, not being a monopoly. The two are not equal.
In fact, Microsoft can't be a monopoly, and you yourself prove it. A monopoly requires the absence of competition, yet last I checked, Linux and Apple are selling well. Last I checked, Netcraft said the vast majority of web servers out there aren't IIS, they're Apache. You have alternatives to Microsoft, ergo Microsoft cannot be a monopoly. It can be an 800 pound gorilla, a force to be reckoned with, but it is not a monopoly. So you're either misinformed, exaggerating, or outright lying. I hope it's the first case.
But seriously, the issue is that a few people with a bunch of money is not free market or capitalism or democracy.
You're wrong on both counts. First, and simplest, the U.S. is not a Democracy despite our public education systems's intense indoctrination program to convince us otherwise. We are a representative Republic. The Founding Fathers specifically did not want a Democracy because they recognized it for what it is: mob rule. In a true Democracy, women would never have been allowed to vote because the majority was against it. Blacks would never have overcome segregation because the majority was against it. Democracy is dangerous.
But to the other point, a free market system inevitably leads to a small number of companies or individuals running the whole show. It happens because of the competitive nature of the free market: he (or she) who can do the best job wins. The company that can produce the best product for the best price with the best profit margin wins in the long run. In essense it is no different than nature, where the most adaptable, aggressive, intelligent, ferocious animal dominates the local environment. Aside from man, lions don't really have any predators. There's a reason for that, and it's the same reason Gates has become as successful as he has: he's good at it.
The government guests amounted to much less than national security. The National Governors Association in town did not get the same treatment elsewhere. Indeed, only the President of the United States, aka the leader of the free world, merits such attention.
In this day and age of terrorism, any gathering of a bunch of rich or powerful is cause for extraordinary security, not just the PotUS. The Oscar have no heavy political figures present, but security was tight as a drum. Ditto for the Golden Globes. The recent DNC event in Boston had security so tight they shut down the subway and closed streets for miles around the event, and John Kerry certainly isn't (and hopefully won't be) the President of the United States.
Stuff like this has been going on since the dawn of civilation, and it's going to continue to go on long after Gates is in the ground. If you're upset about it, you seem a bit thin-skinned to me, or perhaps hopelessly naive about how things happen in the real world. This is not meant to be cruel, just an observation. People with money and power attract other people with money and power, and they decide on things when they're together. If you want to change how things are, become rich and powerful yourself and hold your own galas instead of begruding others theirs. Read Orwell's "Harrison Bergeron" for a wonderful idea of what society would be like if everyone were required to be equal. You shouldn't want something like that, but it sounds like your envy has gotten the better of your logic.
OK, other than the class warfare angle that plays so well to anti-capitalist-types on Slashdot, exactly why is this news? Bill Gates threw a ball for a bunch of current and ex-government types. He paid for it with his own cash. If he got "government" guards, it's because government guests were present. Duh! The Slashdot "article" on this reads like a bit of Bill-Gates-is-rich-and-evil propaganda.
Look, I don't like the guy and I don't like Windows, but what he does with his own time and his own money is his business. You don't see a Slashdot article about "John Kerry and John Edwards host celebrity-laden post-convention gala with celebrity personal security" do you?
I mean, I know Slashdot is heavily biased, but you ought to go back to at least trying to hide it.
It's a pity no one has ever fully finished the NTFS filesystem module for Linux. I understand that payware solutions are available, but the "EXPERIMENTAL" read-write NTFS module has been around for years and years with nobody finishing it up. Right now you can write to an NTFS volume so long as you don't change much of anything...yeah, uh huh. That's real useful. And if you do accidentally change something, you can totally fsck up the volume, or at the very least you have to do a CHKDSK before anything else can access the volume. That's about as useful as a square bowling ball.
I've looked at HuffYUV, and we've actually used it in the past. The problem is it doesn't shrink stuff as much as you'd think, and its fantastically slow.
However, I do appreciate you bringing it up. More help is always better than less.
It doesn't sound as though "compressed streaming format[s]" are what you're really looking for, and AVI isn't a streaming format in any case.
If you consider "streaming" to mean something like RealMedia or other web-based streaming codecs, you are correct. However, working in the DVD/Digital Video/Multimedia fields, we do refer to MPEG-2, AVI, and so forth as a "streaming" format because it is composed of one or more "streams" of content. Basically, the different between what we have now (tens of thousands of individual files, each one representing a single frame of video) and a "streaming" file is that it compresses all those individual files into one big file.
However, there are archival-type video codecs that may suit your needs:
This sounds good on the face of it, but I have a funny feeling this is impractical. I doubt either bzip or compress is fast enough to implement in a filesystem.
But your plugin idea definitely is the way to go. I'm no coder, though, so someone else is going to have to write it, get it tested, and get it integrated into a release-worthy file system or in a distribution. [sigh] I guess I'm going to be waiting for at least another two or three years before that happens.
Sorry, I'm not about to trust archived video to alpha code, or even beta code. If there's no release-worthy option on Linux, we have to stick to NTFS on Windows.
You're right, it wouldn't be traditional UID/GID anymore, it would be something better. We are all in this make something "better," aren't we? Or is this whole OSS thing just one big echo chamber?
Is the Linux/Unix community so "steeped in tradition" (also known as stubborness, obstinance, intolerance, and narrow-mindedness) that it willfully clings to an outdated, inferior way of doing things?
Solid, universal support for ACLs, and while we're at it, let's fix the whole user/group namespace mess Unix has with it. Let's use an SID-style id like Windows does.
Amen to that, brother. I am sick and tired of messing with patches and such to get nice fine-grained ACL's. Windows has had very good ACL support since NT 4.0 back in 1996...why hasn't Linux gotten around to making this a standard feature instead of an add-on?
I know that some don't like it, but we need the option of file system versioning, so that if/when you delete half the lines in your letter/program/... you can get them back from the previous copy on disk.
Interestingly enough, Microsoft has implemented just that very feature in Windows Server 2003. They call it "Shadow Copy Volume" and it's accessed through a "Previous Versions Client" add-on to any file's properties. If you overwrite or delete a file on a Shadow Copy Volume-enabled network share, you can just right-click on the file, select "Properties," and go to the "Previous Versions" tab to see all the prior versions of that file. You can recover any one of them you like and save it anywhere you like. Further, the server only saves the deltas between changes, so it's very space efficient.
This is one feature I'd *love* to see implemented on Linux. I don't think this is in Samba yet, is it?
I've been shouted down before about this, but I'm going to keep asking for it because it's a useful feature for my company: what about per-file compression in the file system? Now before anyone has a hissy fit, let me explain.
We output a lot of digitally-created video files that are huge (think HDTV resolution). Most of these files are output uncompressed because either (a) the file format doesn't support compression or (b) the multimedia program doesn't support compression. Either way, a few minutes of HDTV-quality uncompressed video will absolutely destroy a few hundred gigabytes of space in no time.
We have to hold on to some of this video for quite some time, but we only need to get at it infrequently. It's too big to fit on DVD-R's, tape is too slow, ZIPping it up hinders easy access later, and removable hard drives are expensive. File system compression, on the other hand, does wonders. We routinely get 60%-80% compression on archived video files, and it's allowed us to stretch our disk capacity a long, long way because of it.
We've considered archiving our video in some kind of compressed streaming format like AVI, Quicktime, or MPEG-2, but none of these offer lossless codecs that are appropriate for us, and we're unwilling to accept using a lossy compressor.
So, I ask the question again: when, if ever, is anyone going to implement file compression on a Linux file system? Or does it already exist but is buried somewhere in some arcane HOWTO or website?
There are indirect benefits to involving humans in spaceflight, even if it's economically not as efficient. Example: if we send a robot probe to Saturn, we can afford to let the probe take four years to get there. Ergo, we have no incentive to design better propulsion technologies and better life support/recycling technologies that would be required to get a human there in, say, three months. We just let the robots do the traveling and we sit here nice and comfy on Earth.
The problem is we need to be out there as a species. Having the whole human race on one rock is a serious threat to our survival. We're just one comet or asteroid away from extinction, but spreading the race across one or more planets vastly increases our chances of survival.
Even more importantly, if we expand into space we can begin to harvest space-based resources, thus reducing the need to mine mother Earth for the same stuff. The asteroid belt has untold mineral riches just waiting for someone with the "ideology of adventure" (or ideology of capitalism, whichever comes first I don't care).
Imagine solar power stations on Mercury making antimatter for shipment back to Earth -- essentially an infinite supply of perfectly clean power, and a few grams of antimatter can power a continent for a year. Antimatter production is amazingly wasteful of energy right now, so it's totally impractical here. But Mercury receives eleven times the solar radiation we get here. Set up solar stations, a few particle accelerators, and a launch station. But none of this is practical with robots, it will take humans to build it, run it, and repair it.
For science missions, robots are great, but we need to move space out of the research column and into the practical application column. That's where Van Allen misses the point.
Van Allen comments that 'the only surviving motivation for continuing human spaceflight is the ideology of adventure.'"
Oh, is that all? Well, if that's the case we should abandon manned spaceflight entirely. After all, what has the ideology of adventure brought us in the past? Well, there was that "get out of the cave to look for food" thing. Then there was the "discover new lands" thing, and the "found new cities" thing, and the "develop trade" thing. Then there was the whole "New World" thing.
Yes, Van Allen is right. We should've stayed in the caves. We should've left the "ideology of adventure" to some other species and blissfully sunk into extinction as a result.
But they aren't equal--that's the point. Giving the broadcasters complete control of public property (the airwaves) is a massive corporate giveaway by the government.
Sorry, I disagree. The government cannot give away that which it does not own, and according to how things should be running in a free market system, the government does not "own" the airwaves. The fact that it is "giving away" radio spectrum is, in fact, putting things back the way they should be, namely where private competition can allow the free market to work itself out.
You seem to be from the camp of "government exists to make my life better" crowd. I, on the other hand, am from the "government exists to allow me to make my life better" camp. A subtle but important difference.
Given a choice between democracy and government mandated giveaways to the powerful, I always side with democracy.
Tsk tsk...you're beating the class-warfare drums like a faithful socialist. You claim to be for "democracy" but your ideology seems anything but. Do you not know this country is not a democracy? That the founding father specifically did not want a democracy? We're a Constitutional Republic. Democracy is mob rule, pure and simple. Democracy never would've allowed women to vote because the majority was against it. Democracy would've never allowed the abolition of segregation, since the majority was against it. Still think you're in favor of democracy? If you are, you're advocating a system where only the strongest and most numerous get to make the decisions that affect everyone. That sounds disturbingly close to the "powerful corporate interests" you claim to despise. Methinks you've been caught in a conundrum. You should rethink your ideology and try to find one that isn't so full of logical inconsistencies.
Tsk tsk...namecalling is the last refuge of the incompetent. You sank so low so fast I'm shocked you didn't rupture something.
My intentions were obviously to point out that if Windows doesn't boot -- you've got to re-install. Linux has the advantage of the multitude of LiveCDs you can use to rescue your screw-up.
And my intention was to point out there are numerous ways for Windows users to recover from the exact same scenario. You can boot off the installation CD and do a recovery. You can make a custom boot disk to do manual recover (Bart's PE disk is wonderful for this). Of course, you'd know this if you knew the first damned thing about Windows, but who am I kidding? The only qualifications for being a Microsoft basher on Slashdot are...well, no qualifications at all, it seems. Go read up a bit before you spout off next time and you won't look like such a fool.
Yeah, because there's never been a common problem with Windows that doesn't even let it boot into safe mode
More instant-Google idiocy from you. Did you even bother to read the KB article you linked to? You couldn't have, because if you had, you'd have seen the "Cause" heading which clearly shows you're referencing a hardware issue. Hey, I can put a dodgy IDE cable on a hard drive and get Linux to kernel panic all day long. I guess that makes Windows and Linux equally unstable and unfit for real work, right? Boy, I'm glad we got that cleared up!
and good luck with "uninstalling" SP2 RC2 in a recovery console or administrative recovery mode . If you manage, please contact me. (Now, I've never seen an RC2 install fsck up a Windows box with this or any other error, but this is just an example)
I've already uninstalled SP2 RC2 once from a machine that was in the middle of having a hard drive controller failure. I removed it because I wanted to make sure RC2 wasn't causing the problem (it wasn't). The uninstaller worked flawlessly. If that had failed, I could've used the System Restore feature to return the system to a previous snapshot, and it just so happens SP2 RC2 forces a snapshot prior to installation. So, to sum it up, I'd have to completely and totally fsck up the box in order to render myself unable to uninstall SP2 RC2 -- and if I managed to do that, it wouldn't matter if RC2 were on it or not. Again, if you actually knew what you were talking about, this conversation might actually be worthwhile. But you'd rather demagogue and be a hypocrite. So typical, yet I had hoped you'd be more entertaining than this.
So, yes, if Microsoft's automated SP2 RC2 installer (that is so controlling, it doesn't even give you the option to back-up)
Ummm...BULLSHIT...the fucking installer FORCES a backup! It won't install without it you damned fool! Could you possibly be more stupid? Have you choked on your knee yet, or is your foot just too tasty to swallow?
This is the picture I Was trying to draw. I apologize if it was too hard a reading for you to follow.
No apology necessary, since your arguments were neither logical, factual, or even mildly entertaining. You wished to engage in a big fit of FUD slinging, and you've succeeded admirably! It might've worked against someone with no knowledge of Windows or SP2, but you do not have that advantage here. I fear all of this will fall on deaf ears, however, since you're obviously more interested in crafting fallacies than finding facts, so I will bid you adieu. Please try again later when you've grown up and understand that it's not nice to lie about something to someone who knows more about it than you. They just might catch you and make you look foolish...
Those damn lazy single mothers that can't take time away from raising children and working two jobs to do their civic duty and read obscure news sites at the public library. Give me a break.
Well, gee, perhaps they should've thought about the consequences of their actions before getting pregnant, huh? Or perhaps they should've considered the consequences of getting married and subsequently divorced? Or of getting pregnant outside of wedlock? But nooooo, we can't hold people responsible for their actions, that would be cruuuueeel, wouldn't it? Waaaa! I want my binky! My diapers are soggy! Got kids you can't support? Guess what! They didn't get there from the stork, baby. Got a low-life husband who's leaving you? Perhaps you should've thought about that before you walked down the aisle. Got a job that pays minimum wage? Perhaps you should've thought about that when you cut classes in high school and barely made it to graduation (if you graduated at all). Or perhaps you should've thought about that when you thought it'd be more fun to party in college than to buckle down and pass your classes.
People are where they are in life because of the choices they made along the way. Quit making excuses for them. If there's a single mother out there who can't get her ass down to the public library because she's towing some illegitimate kids around, that's pretty much the fault of her and her (former) husband. The only tragedy here is the kids, which didn't ask to be put in such a situation and are being essentially abused by their idiotic, poorly-judging, irresponsible parents.
Is it cruel? No, it's not. It's called taking responsibility for your actions and putting some damned discipline into your life. We've got enough functionally immature adults running around out there in 30-year-old bodies with the mental discipline of a four-year-old without you making further excuses for that kind of behavior.
Can't cut it in the life you've made for yourself? Tough. Darwinism in action, says I. The stupid get weeded out...or at least they would if they didn't have whiners and excusers like you bleating for them.
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Nope, I'm going to gripe to the software vendor who wrote the buggy, shitty, non-compliant software that's being broken by SP2, because if the vendor had written it according to published Best Practices documents, SP2 wouldn't break it. Yes, this includes certain Microsoft apps as well, but if SP2 breaks it, it needed fixing anyway. I'm all for it, as SP2 is finally going to make app vendors start paying attention to security when writing their apps.
But then again, you're on my Foe list because you've shown your Linux zealot colors in the past, so I can be assured you're leave no good Microsoft initiative unpunished. If SP2 didn't break anything, you'd have complained it was too weak. If it breaks lots of things, you complain it's too invasive. That's why you're irrelevant to this issue -- because no matter what was going to happen, your mind was already made up. There's a phrase for that, it's called "narrow minded."
Umm...ever heard of registry key permissions? These keep malware from altering system-critical stuff. SP2 includes tweaks in that direction as well, in addition to the permission restrictions already applied to non-admin WinXP users. You need Power User or Administrator rights to modify the registry in almost all cases. Those keys that any old user can modify are not critical to the system.
Look, the situation here is no different than Linux. If you're running as root and something decides to fsck with your config files, you're just as screwed as if you were running with admin rights on a Windows box and something fscked with your registry. If Windows is a broken door in this respect, so is Linux -- in the hands of a stupid user, that is.
Contrast the following two comments from your response:
Perhaps your sysadmin skills are lacking. I've never had an issue with using 'emerge --pretend -uD world' to see what will be changed,
and
The fact that a M$ service pack (which replaces M$ only software) can blow up some systems up here and there (one of the reasons why they added system restore points to service pack installations) just gives you an idea of how hard it is to maintain the Windows operating environment.
So, if someone messes up a Linux "service pack" application, they're an idiot and Linux shares no blame, but if they muck up a Windows box, Microsoft is totally to blame. Yup, that makes all the sense in the world...if you're a Linux zealot.
I feel sorry for the M$ developers that have to deal with dll hell and have to worry about retaining ancient compatability with old libraries..
I'll remember that next time I can't get an RPM to install due to dependency hell. That's just so much more fun than DLL hell, isn't it? Sure, I can mitigate that with apt-get and Synaptic package manager, but likewise Windows DLL hell hasn't existed in a long, long time due to built-in Windows DLL version control. Again, you're judging current Microsoft products based upon what they were producing almost ten years ago. Clearly have no idea whatsoever about how much improved Microsoft's current product line is. Perhaps you should research the things you're criticizing before you criticize them.
It's been a while so I might have the numbers wrong...NT 4 SP4 was issued to fix NTFS which was horribly crippled by NT 4 SP3. I suffered through that.
Um, I got news for you: NT4 was released around 1996. The service pack in question was released prior to the year 2000. The product you're speaking of isn't available for sale, isn't current, and isn't even officially supported any longer. We're more than halfway through the year 2004. Isn't it time people quit judging the quality of Microsoft software by what happened almost ten years ago? Would it be fair if I judged Linux's fitness for a particular task based upon a bad experience I had with the 1.x kernel back in 1997? No, but I constantly hear Slashdotters harp about how awful Win95/NT4 was and how nice Linux kernel 2.4/2.6 is when Linux clearly has the benefit of several more years of development under its belt. If you're going to castigate Microsoft for something, castigate current products by comparing them with current alternatives. Doing anything else is comparing apples to oranges.
If such stuff came from Microsoft, it'd be called FUD, but since it comes from Linux lovers on Slashdot, it gets modded +1 Insightful. What a way to be fair and unbiased, huh?
I think most people have an intutive sense that we are, indeed, alone in the universe.
Recent polls in North America do not agree with your conclusion, but you're entitled to your own opinion the same as everyone else is.
However, before you write off extra-terrestrial life simply because we haven't found them yet, consider this: we've been looking only for less than a century, yet the universe is almost immeasurably older than that. And, to quote Carl Sagan, the universe is a pretty big place, with billions and billions of stars per galaxy and potentially billions of galaxies. The odds are actually stacked in favor of life occuring elsewhere, much like the old adage of an infinite number of monkeys hammering away on an infinite number of typewriters will eventually produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. It is improbable, but not impossible, and improbability is reduced by the tremendous scale of the universe.
Although it's fashionable right now in intellecutal circles to conclude "gee, we haven't found them, so they must not exist!", such a view is short sighted and myopic (this applies equally well to WMD's and aliens). If you were challenged with finding a particular grain of sand on the entire Eastern seaboard, and you failed to find it in a year, would you then conclude the grain of sand did not exist? Only if you had your mind made up to begin with.
Here's a relevant excerpt since I doubt you have the integrety to back up your bluster with actual action and take the time to read the thing:
Actually, I have read it, or at least the relevant portions of it. You quote it correctly, but you misunderstand exactly what a "finding of fact" is. It is not a verdict, and if you'll check this article commenting on the finding of fact, you'll realize that.
I took the liberty of actually calling the Judge's office on this matter (his Chambers phone number is listed). His office confirmed that this is not a legal verdict and has no weight, it is merely a finding of fact that can be used to determine a verdict.
So, legally, Microsoft has still never been determined to be a monopoly. Judge Jackson's FoF letter is evidence, but it is not a ruling. So, while you've made an interesting literary diversion for me, you still have not found a verdict or ruling calling Microsoft a monopoly. Please try again, this is starting to get interesting.
Where you even alive a few years ago? At all? The old Netscape vs Microsoft ruling *did* find Microsoft to be a monopoly. Absolutely.
Prove it. Put up a link to the court document that specifically calls Microsoft a monopoly. Do it and I'll post a retraction and an apology. If you can't do it, you owe me a retraction and an apology.
And no, 100% marketshare is not the definition of a monopoly.
Main Entry: monopoly
Pronunciation: m&-'nä-p(&-)lE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -lies
Etymology: Latin monopolium, from Greek monopOlion, from mon- + pOlein to sell
1 : exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action
2 : exclusive possession or control
3 : a commodity controlled by one party
4 : one that has a monopoly
Oops! What's that I find? You're wrong again, it seems. So sad. Please post your retraction and apology and I'll feel a little less guilty about pointing out your deficiency.
So, to put it in your own words, "you're either misinformed, exaggerating, or outright lying. I hope it's the first case."
Since you've been unable to post anything remotely resembling evidence to back up your assertion, it is you that fits this question. So far, the answer seems to be option number three, but please feel free to prove me wrong.
What does "best" mean here? It doesn't mean "best for the consumer".
Exactly! "Best" is a nebulous term that can mean anything, but in this case, "best" means whatever product the consumers decided to adopt. Microsoft Office is "best" in the category of being the most successful product suite in the history of computing. Is that "best" for consumers? Well, they're buying it in droves...what do you think? It's either the "best" in its class or there is no viable competitor. Since competition exists in the form of things like Wordperfect suite, or OpenOffice, or StarOffice, or all the others, clearly consumers have chosen Office as the "best" of the pack. Whether it's "best" for you is irrelevant to the discussion; you representing an insignificant fraction of buying power. The majority has chosen Office as the "best" by numbers alone. Everything else is secondary.
I'll ignore the personal insults. I'm used to that kind of thing and worse from M$ apologists. Name calling is integral to enslavement, so those who wish to enslave will always have offensive mouths.
- man class warfare drivel. You're envious, plain and simple. Either that or you're feeling deficient because you are unable to succeed the way others around you have. Why bother with introspection when it's so much easier to just find someone else to blame?
Coming from someone who started out your original reply with a subject line of "Re:It was unusual, dumbass," this is just rich. It's rare to find someone so oblivious to their own hypocrisy, but you've definitely found a hallowed place in that niche. Apparently you wish to enslave just as badly as those you're accusing of being oppressors and such. Let me guess: you're voting for Kerry or Nader this year, right? You sound like someone who can appreciate talking out of both sides of your mouth at the same time. Pot, meet kettle, you two seem to already know each other quite well.
I was going to comment on the rest of your poorly-spelled and grammatically-challenged post, but it just degenerates into the standard the-rich-are-evil-and-are-holding-down-the-common
You can reply if you want, but it's not going to get much attention from me unless you stop sounding like some tin-foil-beanie lunatic with a class-warfare chip on the shoulder. Why don't you go polish up your Socialist Party membership card and dream about the days when all companies are abolished and truly classless, "common man" society exists! Ah, Utopia!
Are you really this naive or are you just trying to be entertaining?
Of course, since the courts of the land has deemed MS to a monopoly, there is little relation between MS and the free market.
Umm, sorry, but I have to call BS. Find me a court decision where Microsoft was decreed to be a "monopoly." You'll fail, because no such thing ever happened. The DOJ is investigating MS for unfair competition, not being a monopoly. The two are not equal.
In fact, Microsoft can't be a monopoly, and you yourself prove it. A monopoly requires the absence of competition, yet last I checked, Linux and Apple are selling well. Last I checked, Netcraft said the vast majority of web servers out there aren't IIS, they're Apache. You have alternatives to Microsoft, ergo Microsoft cannot be a monopoly. It can be an 800 pound gorilla, a force to be reckoned with, but it is not a monopoly. So you're either misinformed, exaggerating, or outright lying. I hope it's the first case.
But seriously, the issue is that a few people with a bunch of money is not free market or capitalism or democracy.
You're wrong on both counts. First, and simplest, the U.S. is not a Democracy despite our public education systems's intense indoctrination program to convince us otherwise. We are a representative Republic. The Founding Fathers specifically did not want a Democracy because they recognized it for what it is: mob rule. In a true Democracy, women would never have been allowed to vote because the majority was against it. Blacks would never have overcome segregation because the majority was against it. Democracy is dangerous.
But to the other point, a free market system inevitably leads to a small number of companies or individuals running the whole show. It happens because of the competitive nature of the free market: he (or she) who can do the best job wins. The company that can produce the best product for the best price with the best profit margin wins in the long run. In essense it is no different than nature, where the most adaptable, aggressive, intelligent, ferocious animal dominates the local environment. Aside from man, lions don't really have any predators. There's a reason for that, and it's the same reason Gates has become as successful as he has: he's good at it.
The government guests amounted to much less than national security. The National Governors Association in town did not get the same treatment elsewhere. Indeed, only the President of the United States, aka the leader of the free world, merits such attention.
In this day and age of terrorism, any gathering of a bunch of rich or powerful is cause for extraordinary security, not just the PotUS. The Oscar have no heavy political figures present, but security was tight as a drum. Ditto for the Golden Globes. The recent DNC event in Boston had security so tight they shut down the subway and closed streets for miles around the event, and John Kerry certainly isn't (and hopefully won't be) the President of the United States.
Stuff like this has been going on since the dawn of civilation, and it's going to continue to go on long after Gates is in the ground. If you're upset about it, you seem a bit thin-skinned to me, or perhaps hopelessly naive about how things happen in the real world. This is not meant to be cruel, just an observation. People with money and power attract other people with money and power, and they decide on things when they're together. If you want to change how things are, become rich and powerful yourself and hold your own galas instead of begruding others theirs. Read Orwell's "Harrison Bergeron" for a wonderful idea of what society would be like if everyone were required to be equal. You shouldn't want something like that, but it sounds like your envy has gotten the better of your logic.
OK, other than the class warfare angle that plays so well to anti-capitalist-types on Slashdot, exactly why is this news? Bill Gates threw a ball for a bunch of current and ex-government types. He paid for it with his own cash. If he got "government" guards, it's because government guests were present. Duh! The Slashdot "article" on this reads like a bit of Bill-Gates-is-rich-and-evil propaganda.
Look, I don't like the guy and I don't like Windows, but what he does with his own time and his own money is his business. You don't see a Slashdot article about "John Kerry and John Edwards host celebrity-laden post-convention gala with celebrity personal security" do you?
I mean, I know Slashdot is heavily biased, but you ought to go back to at least trying to hide it.
It's a pity no one has ever fully finished the NTFS filesystem module for Linux. I understand that payware solutions are available, but the "EXPERIMENTAL" read-write NTFS module has been around for years and years with nobody finishing it up. Right now you can write to an NTFS volume so long as you don't change much of anything...yeah, uh huh. That's real useful. And if you do accidentally change something, you can totally fsck up the volume, or at the very least you have to do a CHKDSK before anything else can access the volume. That's about as useful as a square bowling ball.
I've looked at HuffYUV, and we've actually used it in the past. The problem is it doesn't shrink stuff as much as you'd think, and its fantastically slow.
However, I do appreciate you bringing it up. More help is always better than less.
It doesn't sound as though "compressed streaming format[s]" are what you're really looking for, and AVI isn't a streaming format in any case.
If you consider "streaming" to mean something like RealMedia or other web-based streaming codecs, you are correct. However, working in the DVD/Digital Video/Multimedia fields, we do refer to MPEG-2, AVI, and so forth as a "streaming" format because it is composed of one or more "streams" of content. Basically, the different between what we have now (tens of thousands of individual files, each one representing a single frame of video) and a "streaming" file is that it compresses all those individual files into one big file.
However, there are archival-type video codecs that may suit your needs:
Thanks for the listing! I will check into these.
This sounds good on the face of it, but I have a funny feeling this is impractical. I doubt either bzip or compress is fast enough to implement in a filesystem.
But your plugin idea definitely is the way to go. I'm no coder, though, so someone else is going to have to write it, get it tested, and get it integrated into a release-worthy file system or in a distribution. [sigh] I guess I'm going to be waiting for at least another two or three years before that happens.
Sorry, I'm not about to trust archived video to alpha code, or even beta code. If there's no release-worthy option on Linux, we have to stick to NTFS on Windows.
You're right, it wouldn't be traditional UID/GID anymore, it would be something better. We are all in this make something "better," aren't we? Or is this whole OSS thing just one big echo chamber?
Is the Linux/Unix community so "steeped in tradition" (also known as stubborness, obstinance, intolerance, and narrow-mindedness) that it willfully clings to an outdated, inferior way of doing things?
Solid, universal support for ACLs, and while we're at it, let's fix the whole user/group namespace mess Unix has with it. Let's use an SID-style id like Windows does.
Amen to that, brother. I am sick and tired of messing with patches and such to get nice fine-grained ACL's. Windows has had very good ACL support since NT 4.0 back in 1996...why hasn't Linux gotten around to making this a standard feature instead of an add-on?
I know that some don't like it, but we need the option of file system versioning, so that if/when you delete half the lines in your letter/program/... you can get them back from the previous copy on disk.
Interestingly enough, Microsoft has implemented just that very feature in Windows Server 2003. They call it "Shadow Copy Volume" and it's accessed through a "Previous Versions Client" add-on to any file's properties. If you overwrite or delete a file on a Shadow Copy Volume-enabled network share, you can just right-click on the file, select "Properties," and go to the "Previous Versions" tab to see all the prior versions of that file. You can recover any one of them you like and save it anywhere you like. Further, the server only saves the deltas between changes, so it's very space efficient.
This is one feature I'd *love* to see implemented on Linux. I don't think this is in Samba yet, is it?
I've been shouted down before about this, but I'm going to keep asking for it because it's a useful feature for my company: what about per-file compression in the file system? Now before anyone has a hissy fit, let me explain.
We output a lot of digitally-created video files that are huge (think HDTV resolution). Most of these files are output uncompressed because either (a) the file format doesn't support compression or (b) the multimedia program doesn't support compression. Either way, a few minutes of HDTV-quality uncompressed video will absolutely destroy a few hundred gigabytes of space in no time.
We have to hold on to some of this video for quite some time, but we only need to get at it infrequently. It's too big to fit on DVD-R's, tape is too slow, ZIPping it up hinders easy access later, and removable hard drives are expensive. File system compression, on the other hand, does wonders. We routinely get 60%-80% compression on archived video files, and it's allowed us to stretch our disk capacity a long, long way because of it.
We've considered archiving our video in some kind of compressed streaming format like AVI, Quicktime, or MPEG-2, but none of these offer lossless codecs that are appropriate for us, and we're unwilling to accept using a lossy compressor.
So, I ask the question again: when, if ever, is anyone going to implement file compression on a Linux file system? Or does it already exist but is buried somewhere in some arcane HOWTO or website?
There are indirect benefits to involving humans in spaceflight, even if it's economically not as efficient. Example: if we send a robot probe to Saturn, we can afford to let the probe take four years to get there. Ergo, we have no incentive to design better propulsion technologies and better life support/recycling technologies that would be required to get a human there in, say, three months. We just let the robots do the traveling and we sit here nice and comfy on Earth.
The problem is we need to be out there as a species. Having the whole human race on one rock is a serious threat to our survival. We're just one comet or asteroid away from extinction, but spreading the race across one or more planets vastly increases our chances of survival.
Even more importantly, if we expand into space we can begin to harvest space-based resources, thus reducing the need to mine mother Earth for the same stuff. The asteroid belt has untold mineral riches just waiting for someone with the "ideology of adventure" (or ideology of capitalism, whichever comes first I don't care).
Imagine solar power stations on Mercury making antimatter for shipment back to Earth -- essentially an infinite supply of perfectly clean power, and a few grams of antimatter can power a continent for a year. Antimatter production is amazingly wasteful of energy right now, so it's totally impractical here. But Mercury receives eleven times the solar radiation we get here. Set up solar stations, a few particle accelerators, and a launch station. But none of this is practical with robots, it will take humans to build it, run it, and repair it.
For science missions, robots are great, but we need to move space out of the research column and into the practical application column. That's where Van Allen misses the point.
Van Allen comments that 'the only surviving motivation for continuing human spaceflight is the ideology of adventure.'"
Oh, is that all? Well, if that's the case we should abandon manned spaceflight entirely. After all, what has the ideology of adventure brought us in the past? Well, there was that "get out of the cave to look for food" thing. Then there was the "discover new lands" thing, and the "found new cities" thing, and the "develop trade" thing. Then there was the whole "New World" thing.
Yes, Van Allen is right. We should've stayed in the caves. We should've left the "ideology of adventure" to some other species and blissfully sunk into extinction as a result.
But they aren't equal--that's the point. Giving the broadcasters complete control of public property (the airwaves) is a massive corporate giveaway by the government.
Sorry, I disagree. The government cannot give away that which it does not own, and according to how things should be running in a free market system, the government does not "own" the airwaves. The fact that it is "giving away" radio spectrum is, in fact, putting things back the way they should be, namely where private competition can allow the free market to work itself out.
You seem to be from the camp of "government exists to make my life better" crowd. I, on the other hand, am from the "government exists to allow me to make my life better" camp. A subtle but important difference.
Given a choice between democracy and government mandated giveaways to the powerful, I always side with democracy.
Tsk tsk...you're beating the class-warfare drums like a faithful socialist. You claim to be for "democracy" but your ideology seems anything but. Do you not know this country is not a democracy? That the founding father specifically did not want a democracy? We're a Constitutional Republic. Democracy is mob rule, pure and simple. Democracy never would've allowed women to vote because the majority was against it. Democracy would've never allowed the abolition of segregation, since the majority was against it. Still think you're in favor of democracy? If you are, you're advocating a system where only the strongest and most numerous get to make the decisions that affect everyone. That sounds disturbingly close to the "powerful corporate interests" you claim to despise. Methinks you've been caught in a conundrum. You should rethink your ideology and try to find one that isn't so full of logical inconsistencies.
OK, moron, I'll bite...
Tsk tsk...namecalling is the last refuge of the incompetent. You sank so low so fast I'm shocked you didn't rupture something.
My intentions were obviously to point out that if Windows doesn't boot -- you've got to re-install. Linux has the advantage of the multitude of LiveCDs you can use to rescue your screw-up.
And my intention was to point out there are numerous ways for Windows users to recover from the exact same scenario. You can boot off the installation CD and do a recovery. You can make a custom boot disk to do manual recover (Bart's PE disk is wonderful for this). Of course, you'd know this if you knew the first damned thing about Windows, but who am I kidding? The only qualifications for being a Microsoft basher on Slashdot are...well, no qualifications at all, it seems. Go read up a bit before you spout off next time and you won't look like such a fool.
Yeah, because there's never been a common problem with Windows that doesn't even let it boot into safe mode
More instant-Google idiocy from you. Did you even bother to read the KB article you linked to? You couldn't have, because if you had, you'd have seen the "Cause" heading which clearly shows you're referencing a hardware issue. Hey, I can put a dodgy IDE cable on a hard drive and get Linux to kernel panic all day long. I guess that makes Windows and Linux equally unstable and unfit for real work, right? Boy, I'm glad we got that cleared up!
and good luck with "uninstalling" SP2 RC2 in a recovery console or administrative recovery mode . If you manage, please contact me. (Now, I've never seen an RC2 install fsck up a Windows box with this or any other error, but this is just an example)
I've already uninstalled SP2 RC2 once from a machine that was in the middle of having a hard drive controller failure. I removed it because I wanted to make sure RC2 wasn't causing the problem (it wasn't). The uninstaller worked flawlessly. If that had failed, I could've used the System Restore feature to return the system to a previous snapshot, and it just so happens SP2 RC2 forces a snapshot prior to installation. So, to sum it up, I'd have to completely and totally fsck up the box in order to render myself unable to uninstall SP2 RC2 -- and if I managed to do that, it wouldn't matter if RC2 were on it or not. Again, if you actually knew what you were talking about, this conversation might actually be worthwhile. But you'd rather demagogue and be a hypocrite. So typical, yet I had hoped you'd be more entertaining than this.
So, yes, if Microsoft's automated SP2 RC2 installer (that is so controlling, it doesn't even give you the option to back-up)
Ummm...BULLSHIT...the fucking installer FORCES a backup! It won't install without it you damned fool! Could you possibly be more stupid? Have you choked on your knee yet, or is your foot just too tasty to swallow?
This is the picture I Was trying to draw. I apologize if it was too hard a reading for you to follow.
No apology necessary, since your arguments were neither logical, factual, or even mildly entertaining. You wished to engage in a big fit of FUD slinging, and you've succeeded admirably! It might've worked against someone with no knowledge of Windows or SP2, but you do not have that advantage here. I fear all of this will fall on deaf ears, however, since you're obviously more interested in crafting fallacies than finding facts, so I will bid you adieu. Please try again later when you've grown up and understand that it's not nice to lie about something to someone who knows more about it than you. They just might catch you and make you look foolish...
Those damn lazy single mothers that can't take time away from raising children and working two jobs to do their civic duty and read obscure news sites at the public library. Give me a break.
Well, gee, perhaps they should've thought about the consequences of their actions before getting pregnant, huh? Or perhaps they should've considered the consequences of getting married and subsequently divorced? Or of getting pregnant outside of wedlock? But nooooo, we can't hold people responsible for their actions, that would be cruuuueeel, wouldn't it? Waaaa! I want my binky! My diapers are soggy! Got kids you can't support? Guess what! They didn't get there from the stork, baby. Got a low-life husband who's leaving you? Perhaps you should've thought about that before you walked down the aisle. Got a job that pays minimum wage? Perhaps you should've thought about that when you cut classes in high school and barely made it to graduation (if you graduated at all). Or perhaps you should've thought about that when you thought it'd be more fun to party in college than to buckle down and pass your classes.
People are where they are in life because of the choices they made along the way. Quit making excuses for them. If there's a single mother out there who can't get her ass down to the public library because she's towing some illegitimate kids around, that's pretty much the fault of her and her (former) husband. The only tragedy here is the kids, which didn't ask to be put in such a situation and are being essentially abused by their idiotic, poorly-judging, irresponsible parents.
Is it cruel? No, it's not. It's called taking responsibility for your actions and putting some damned discipline into your life. We've got enough functionally immature adults running around out there in 30-year-old bodies with the mental discipline of a four-year-old without you making further excuses for that kind of behavior.
Can't cut it in the life you've made for yourself? Tough. Darwinism in action, says I. The stupid get weeded out...or at least they would if they didn't have whiners and excusers like you bleating for them.