Unfortunately, Google's home page is still not W3C compliant. They don't put in a doctype, which is the first problem, and few of the HTML tag attributes are quoted, resulting in 53 HTML errors.
I'd be much happier if they added 100 bytes or so to the page to make it completely W3C-compliant -- it's not that hard to do, and it would make them have one more bragging right over Yahoo and the others.
Having administered Linux web servers for several years, I decided to set up a dedicated Linux print server at home. My printer is an HP Color Laserjet 4500 which installs easily with pretty much any Windows version; I decided to forego buying the JetDirect ethernet card for the printer and use Linux as a print server instead.
I asked my friends what to use on my AMD K6-2 300 that had been commandeered for the purpose of running Linux (no dual-boot attempts here.) They said "Debian." I shouldn't have listened.
dselect is the most nightmarish application I have ever seen. I spent a good 15 minutes reading the help files, most of which were of no use to me. I then somehow managed to exit out of dselect by hitting some keystroke. BAM! I was dropped into a console prompt with absolutely no packages installed.
Aha! I thought. Apt-get to my rescue! After all, that was the saving grace of Debian. I tried "apt-get install kde." Not the right package name. Okay.... "apt-get install gnome." No? I just need to apt-get some sort of GUI!
With tedious Google searching, I finally figured out the sequence of commands to install KDE, and I was off and running. (I think I ended up installing some calculator program that required the KDE libraries, and it went ahead and installed KDE for me.)
I rebooted and was dropped into KDE.... exxcept that Debian wouldn't detect my USB mouse. I ended up having to go into #debian on freenode and get the instructions on how to edit some mouse configuration file just to make Debian understand that my mouse was on a USB port. After my mouse worked, I started using Debian, except that I got this weird C error dialog whenever I ran any application. I gave up and tried Red Hat 7.3 (then the latest) instead.
Red Hat was much easier for me to use. It detected my mouse during the install program, which was nice. However, it didn't detect my printer. I finally got the printer installed under the "control panel" sort of thing that KDE had, only to find out that most of the computer's applications didn't recognize that I was using CUPS! I went back to IRC and asked what the deal was. "Oh, that's normal," was the response. "If you set up the printer under KDE, only KDE applications will recognize it! Then you have to go in and tell all your other applications that the printer is now defined under CUPS instead of LPR. A window manager doesn't control your entire system! You should learn the difference between a window manager and the underlying OS."
By this time, I was miffed. If I set up a printer in Windows or Mac OS under the Control Panel, all the applications realize that that printer is now my default printer. Why in the world couldn't Mozilla (to use one example) do this? As far as I was concerned, the GUI control panel was the system control panel. To force users to learn the difference between window managers and the underlying OS and to force users to understand that changes they make in the window manager won't apply to the entire OS is a usability gaffe of such proportions that it hasn't been committed since Windows 95 took DOS out of the picture 8 years ago.
It took me several more hours to set up Samba to share my printer out to my Windows XP box, most notably because of a bug in Samba that prevented sharing printers to Windows XP. I then had the printer working with over 7 hours of work. It was a very long day for me.
I used the print server successfully for a few weeks. I then went away for Christmas and turned the computer off. When I came home and turned it on, there was no print server (and yes, I'd made sure that all the correct services were set to run on startup, which was yet another annoyance I had to consider in the 7-hour setup process.) Instead of being frustrated, I remembered that I had an old Pentium 75 in the garage that ran Windows 95. 15 minutes later, I had downloaded the Windows 95 drivers from HP's website, clicked the "enable printer sharing" button,
I do some contract work for a nationally-syndicated home improvement radio show, so I'm quite familiar with the whole Clear Channel buyout process. Since some of you may not know how this works, I'll explain it as succinctly as I can.
Let's say you own a radio station. Your radio station plays Top 40 stuff. You have hired some local DJs from the nearby college to play music, and you have some fun with various weekend and Friday night shows that showcase some local artists. You have a playlist that is based both on what other Top 40 stations are playing (the "popular" music), and requests from your listeners. You're doing well, but you have to maintain a staff to sell ads, and you're finding it harder and harder to do this.
Clear Channel comes in and offers to buy your radio station. Now, Clear Channel has enough money so that they can make you an offer you can't refuse. You acquiesce and agree to become a Clear Channel station.
Clear Channel places your station into one of seven formats. Everyone who listens to radio is now clear on what these formats are, because that's pretty much all that remains on radio today. There's "Top 40", which is what your station will be. There are also "easy listening", "talk", and four others.
Clear Channel fires 4 out of your 6 local DJs and replaces them with DJs from other areas. This is how Clear Channel makes its money: it can pay one "regional" DJ $15 an hour to broadcast out to 4 regional stations, or you and 3 other stations could each pay $12 an hour to 4 DJs to do the same thing. Thus, the complaints from the listeners start to arrive about losing the "local" feel, but by then there's nothing you can do--it's all in Clear Channel's hands.
Clear Channel takes a look at your programming and decides what you will and won't continue to play. In the case of Top 40, they give you a playlist. In the case of talk stations, they give you a list of syndicated shows and force you to drop everything that isn't on the list. (This is where On The House comes in-- every time Clear Channel buys a station out, they force the station to drop On The House in favor of their home improvement guy. We've lost several affiliates this way.)
Let's continue with the analogy of your (er, Clear Channel's) Top 40 station. You're now forced to drop the local bits since you only have two local DJs left (and in all likelihood, they're both doing the morning show, since that's the most lucrative time for radio.) You're now fed a playlist. Clear Channel has national playlists. That means that whatever your station is playing is the same stuff that every other Top 40 station owned by Clear Channel is playing. Do you wonder why all radio stations seem to play the same stuff? If they're owned by Clear Channel, it's because they are playing the same songs.
How does Clear Channel come up with these songs? They test-market in one market. ONE. In your case, the Top 40 stuff is tested in places like New Mexico. Yep, listeners in New Mexico are deciding what your station is going to play! Welcome to Clear Channel.
If you're wondering why radio seems to have gone downhill, you can look no further than Clear Channel. Sadly, DJs are pretty much corporate minions these days. They no longer get to spin new local tracks, and they don't have a choice on what to air. Many of them aren't even in the studio for half or more of the time they're on air -- they pre-record bits and play them as their segment progresses.
It's a sad time for radio. Fortunately, I believe the independents like On The House will survive. The independent radio stations will find their niche as well. I believe that Clear Channel will eventually feel the consumer backlash, much like we lashed out against high CD prices.
Please don't shrug your shoulders about the new FCC regulations being suspended, though. Loosening these regulations is a bad thing. Clear Channel doesn't need to hurt radio any more than it already has.
"I simply cannot bring myself to pay the up2date tax when apt-get is free and just plain works better."
Er, what? up2date is free. Red Hat requires you to register the system with Red Hat to obtain updates and fill out a a survey every few months to keep your system up to date.
If filling out a survey isn't your thing, or you have several systems to maintain, Red Hat provides unlimited access to errata, plus the newest release ISOs, for $60 a year per system. That's FIVE DOLLARS A MONTH. I'm sure you spend a heck of a lot more time than that "tracking down and trying to install release-specific RPMs." If your company can't afford to spend five dollars a month on updates for their servers, it has larger problems.
It honestly sounds like you haven't really researched your options. Do yourself a favor and go check out the purchase options for Red Hat errata. Seriously, $60 a year is a deal for access to errata plus the newest ISOs!
Did anyone (including the person who posted this story) actually read the article?
If you read the article, the first thing that jumps out is the date: June 1 to September 3, 2001. In fact, if you'll notice, the IP address they refer to (http://139.142.46.159) is long gone.
Reading further, it is revealed that this was a museum exhibit at the Mendel Art Gallery in Canada in 2001. The link cited shows the proposal they sent to the museum, which is why it reads rather oddly ("This will ideally allow for gallery staff to replace the fly.") The museum accepted the proposal, as can be seen here, at the museum's website.
Please, editors, do your homework before posting these stories. It's an interesting story, but quite dated.
"For 2003, [Overture] now expects to see revenue of more than $1 billion and earnings per share of 60 cents to 70 cents. Analysts had been expecting the company to report earnings of 91 cents per share on revenue of $1.03 billion."
Wow! Overture has better earnings per share than Microsoft!They've also beaten eBay, which is generally considered one of the most profitable Internet companies. Is pay-for-placement really so valuable that it creates a billion-dollar company? Can someone who understands this business model explain how it's making so much money?
If Overture is truly an Internet-only success story, it bodes well for the rest of us who have jobs that rely on the Internet. More profitable companies mean that the Internet will be taken more seriously and that there will be more Internet jobs, which is always a good thing!
Although I think laws such as the junk fax law are a step in the right direction, the problem I see with most spam is that the headers have been forged to the point of illegitimacy. Sure, if they include a link to a website, you could go after the person or people listed in the WHOIS record, but it would be easy for the administrative contact to claim that he or she didn't send the spam.
Sears is an easy target -- they probably sent semi-legitimate spam that included contact and/or removal information, as well as the Sears website. However, I doubt that $500 will steer Sears in the right direction regarding spam. For $500, it's easier for them to write a check than to pursue it in court. I'd guess they made several thousand dollars off the spam mail, and that the $500 was written off as a cost of doing business.
My point is, that between completely illegitimate spam that doesn't even have any real contact information, and companies that make a lot of money off of spam and who don't mind writing a $500 check every once in a while, this law won't be very effective.
I will continue to argue that spam is a technical problem and needs a technical solution to solve it. Ultimately, even if the big companies like Sears stop spamming, there will always be the spammers who send out 100 million penis enlargement spam mails with fake headers and fake return addresses that render the spam nearly impossible to trace. The illegitimate spam problem won't be solved by laws -- it will be solved by the intelligence of the Internet community. I'd rather see this solved by technical prowess than by laws that will only encourage spammers to fake their mail headers to avoid lawsuits.
It's great that someone is handing out free certs, but CA Cert isn't trusted by Internet Explorer.
If 90%+ of your users are going to get the warning "The security certificate was issued by a company you have chosen not to trust," you might as well be signing your own certificates. The whole point of having a certificate is that your users won't get that pop-up window when they go to buy something from your store.
Thanks for the info, but until CA Cert gets in the trusted list for IE, it's not worth it... even if it's free.
I installed RealOne recently, and much to my dismay, they have removed the preference setting to kill "StartCenter". StartCenter is the annoying thing that sits in your system tray and starts up with your computer. In RealOne Player, not only does it have a systray icon, but it also places little pop-up "message" windows on your computer! It's completely disgusting.
There are no preference settings in RealOne Player to disable this, so I thought I'd post this here, since I'm sure this thread will be filled with people who hate RealOne as much as I do.
The startup code for the popup window is hidden in your registry. The easiest way to get rid of it is to use 'msconfig', which comes with every version of Windows except for 2000. (In a minute, I'll explain how to get rid of it on Windows 2000 as well.)
To use msconfig, go to Start->Run and type in 'msconfig' (no quotes.) Go to the Startup tab. You should see an entry beginning with "real". Uncheck the box next to this entry so that it won't load on startup. In addition, look for an entry called "eventsvc" whose command is "c:\Program Files\Common Files\Real..." This is part of RealPlayer as well, and you can uncheck it safely. (While you're at it, this is the place you can disable those useless ATI control panels and other muckety-muck that likes to sit down in the system tray. Don't worry; you can always go back and re-enable the services later if you disable something you need.)
Once you've unchecked whatever you don't want to load, hit "OK". You will be prompted to restart your computer to make the changes take effect. Go ahead and restart. When you log in next time, you'll see a box explaining that your system is now in "diagnostic" mode. Check the box that says "Don't show me this again" and click OK to be on your merry way (hopefully with a faster bootup time.)
In Windows 2000, you can manually edit the Registry to get rid of these keys. Unlike msconfig, there is no going back, so make sure you know what you're doing! Look in HKLM or HKCU under Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run. You should find the little bugger there. Delete it.
(Standard disclaimer: If you screw up your computer doing this, I am not responsible. If you don't know what a key is, it may be best to leave it alone. Doing a Google search may help you figure out what is necessary and what isn't. In general, leave anything that has to do with your hardware alone, especially modem software, as your modem may require it to work properly.)
Also, when installing RealPlayer, always take the time to read the installer to know what it's doing! You can, and should, disable most of the crap it tries to do, such as opening MP3s and auto-updating your RealPlayer with the latest advertisements. Try "compact" mode as well--that should kill most of the remaining advertisements.
I hope this helps those of you who are (unfortunately) faced with RealPlayer's wrath. The tips above can help to tame your system and make it a bit nicer to use your computer.
As always, if you have relatives who use RealPlayer, or you maintain it in an office setting, it may be best to perform that procedure on every computer. There's really no need for workers to be distracted by RealPlayer advertising. If you're using msconfig, don't forget to restart the computer and disable that "diagnostic" mode box that pops up, as well, or your less technically-inclined relatives/co-workers may be calling you for help!;)
..."it does irk me that the service... is... the stuff you can get on line for free..."
Great! Let me know where I can go to a website and see every Steve Martin movie that is coming up in the next two weeks, with specific channel numbers, dates, and times.
And which website was it where I could go and click on MOVIES, and then type in "Steve Martin", and have it record all of those movies automatically?
"I don't like the program guide fee required on current PVRs."
You know, this subject comes up every time an article featuring the TiVo is posted, and every time someone gets "+5, Insightful" for whining about the TiVo monthly fee.
My TiVo monthly fee is $4.95. Yes, less than five dollars a month. That's cheaper than the burrito I ate for lunch today! For everything that TiVo gives me, $5 is chump change. Plus, you can do yearly and/or lifetime subscriptions. It's also lumped in with my DirecTV bill, so I don't get a separate "TiVo bill" that I have to worry about paying. What is the big deal?
I get 500+ channels plus HBO, local channels, and TiVo for less than $60 a month. Digital cable would give me the same thing without TiVo for $85/month. You want value? Buy a DirecTV+TiVo. But please, stop whining about the subscription. Every damn TiVo owner in the world will tell you that the $4.95 is money well-spent on a TiVo.
The only people I hear complaining are people who think the TiVo is a glorified VCR. The TiVo is not a VCR with a monthly fee! It is a totally different way to watch TV. It frees you from cheesy "primetime" TV. I told my TiVo to tape every Steve Martin movie that was on, regardless of any channel it was on. Every once in a while I turn the TiVo on to find a Steve Martin movie recorded and waiting for me to watch! I can order and record Pay-Per-View with one click. I have completely foregone Blockbuster (and I say "Good Riddance!") Five dollars a month is worth it to watch every Steve Martin classic, get rid of video store late fees, and give up on crappy primetime TV. (Hmm, the Simpsons was on at 6PM... I think I'll just watch that at 9PM instead of whatever is on now!)
I do not work at TiVo. I do not work at DirecTV. I am, however, a satisfied customer of both. (Oh, and has your cable company lowered your monthly cable bill this year? DirecTV lowered my monthly bill TWICE in 2002. What more can I ask for?)
I watched the Quicktime keynote with great interst, hoping that Jobs would finally introduce a 4-pound notebook. I've been waiting for one for a while, so I'm really excited that Apple finally introduced one!
Unfortunately, however, the notebook doesn't include DVI-out support, so my monitor would fall back to VGA mode if I tried to use the notebook with it. Does anyone know if Apple or a third party plans to offer a PC Card with DVI support? Margi had one, but it's only 4MB... not quite enough for this particular monitor.
Also, one thing Apple keeps failing to address is the #1 reason I haven't switched to a Mac. Steve, where are the software trade-in incentives? I own Photoshop 6 and 7, Dreamweaver MX, and Microsoft Office XP for the PC. What on Earth is keeping Apple and/or other vendors from offering trade-in incentives? Why can I not trade in my two boxed Photoshop-for-PC copies and receive Photoshop 7 for Mac OS X? The same goes for Dreamweaver MX. The cost to move to a Mac is almost doubled by the $1500 worth of software that I already have for my PC.
Here's hoping Apple will start to address this issue, especially since the platform is geared toward video developers and graphic designers -- two markets whose people invest heavily in expensive software.
"HD is a retail shop, not a technology shop....As far as the head retailers were concerned, IT was nothing more than a 'cost center.'"
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Home Depot will never be as big as Wal-Mart. Home Depot thinks of IT as a hole that the company is constantly pouring money into; Wal-Mart relentlessly uses IT to further its goals of getting the lowest cost from suppliers. (The definitive article on Wal-Mart and technology.)
Home Depot will never be a leader in the industry if it continues to view IT as an expense rather than an investment. Your post was an excellent example of how retailers tend to forget that technology, when used properly, can not only form the core of the business, but strengthen existing product lines. Home Depot's executive staff most likely looks at Wal-Mart and ask "How do they do that?" The answer lies in Wal-Mart's aggressive stance on technology adoption.
In fact, Wal-Mart and Home Depot are even compared here, where Wal-Mart's CIO is asked whether or not it will make a difference if competitors use RFID tags. (RFID tags are Wal-Mart's next big frontier.) "The challenge is to keep innovating faster than the competition can copy us," he says.
If what you're saying really is true of Home Depot, expect Wal-Mart to keep swallowing Home Depot's business. Wal-Mart has never labeled itself as "just a retail shop," as you label Home Depot. Home Depot doesn't have the competitive advantage, nor does it sound like they know where to spend to get that advantage. I expect that Wal-mart will remain a leader for some time to come in the retail space. This quote sums up what you're seeing nicely:
"'I think Wal-Mart views technology in a different light than most retailers,' says Peter Abell, retail research director at AMR Research. 'It's not only an integral part of the company, but it's where the leaders of the company can come from.'"
This is the direction in which Home Depot must go in order to become truly successful at lowering costs and increasing productivity. Unfortunately for Home Depot, Wal-Mart is already there, and getting further and further ahead...
"One of the press releases on the linked page answers 'why?'."
You know, some people bang their heads on the wall when they see bad code. Others get really frustrated when they see bad design, or bad grammar, or any number of things.
I get frustrated when I see a project whose founders obviously think is "cool," but which completely fails to answer the question "Why should I care?"
Obviously, you found that answer, and you certainly did better than I did.
I read the Slashdot summary, which completely failed to answer the question "Why should I care?" Then I clicked on the link, which also completely failed to answer that question. It's really frustrating to see the pertinent information on the site buried in a freakin' press release that very few people will ever read. (I mean, I'm guessing you clicked on the press release as sort of a last resort, and it's certainly not the place where most people would go to find out why this project is cool.)
The lesson I would like other geeks to learn from this article is damn, people, if you're doing something cool, put it in bold type on your front page! Say "We are here because we want to kick some ass. We're going to kick the ass of the domain name commissioner because we want to try out the latest cool geek technologies and this is the best way for us to do it! Hey, JOIN US! Help us out!"
The first rule of sales is that you have to convince the prospect that your product matters. This holds true whether you're selling encyclopedias door-to-door or whether you're trying to convince your boss to fund the purchase of new server equipment! Unfortunately, geeks have this tendency to throw out facts and just hope that people make the connection between those facts and their product being awesome. It really comes to light in a situation like this, where 95% of the audience doesn't know anything about New Zealand's domain structure or why a new second-level domain is a ground-breaking, earth-shattering, AWESOME achievement! That's why almost all of the posts here have been either "Huh?" or "Why should I care?"
As much as you may hate sales; as much as you want to believe that the facts will speak for themselves... take this article and the responses to it as a reason why they won't. Next time you're trying to convince someone that they absolutely should go with Linux, or that they absolutely, without a doubt, should use this piece of awesome software for their projects, answer the question that they will always think of first: "Why should I care?" If you can answer that, you've won half the battle.
If you can't answer that, and you try to just throw out facts and hope that they speak for themselves, you'll get the same response that these guys got...
Wow. Upon reading the summary, my first thought was "Why do I care?" I mean, geek.nz... they're just going to put up a website or something, right?
Actually, they're trying to get a domain extension of sorts, much like the pre-existing.org.nz,.net.nz and.co.nz. (I don't know whether I should blame the story submitter, the Slashdot editor, or the guys who wrote the webpage for the completely ordinary, ho-hum writeup, since all of them seemed to assume that we understood exactly what they were trying to do.)
From what I gather, the domain name commissioner of New Zealand is in charge of approving second-level domains. There is a list of criteria for these domains here (which is linked from the geek.nz website.) These people are trying to put geek.nz in the same realm as.co.nz,.net.nz, and.org.nz based on the criteria in the linked PDF above (namely, that they have a long-standing common interest and should get a second-level domain for it.)
The linked website is pretty terrible in terms of explaining to the rest of the world these geeks' true motivation to do this. Okay, you want a second-level domain, and you meet the criteria... and? Is this to make your government open up its domain name system to anyone who has a legitimate interest? Is it just a cool project? Unfortunately, the website that they made shows none of their motivation for doing this.
As it is, it seems to be a cool novelty, but these geeks failed to express any sort of goal for this project. Interesting? I suppose. Slashdot-worthy? Not really.
Verifying a package compares information about the installed files in the package with information about the files taken from the package metadata stored in the rpm database. Among other things, verifying compares the size, MD5 sum, permissions, type, owner and group of each file. Any discrepencies are displayed.... The (mnemonically emBoldened) character denotes failure of the corresponding --verify test:
S file Size differs
M Mode differs (includes permissions and file type)
5 MD5 sum differs
D Device major/minor number mis-match
L readLink(2) path mis-match
U User ownership differs
G Group ownership differs
T mTime differs
So while that's a bit cryptic, a shell script run once every x days (30? 14?) should tell you what files have changed. All you would have to do is run rpm -qa to grab a list of the packages in your system, and then loop through the list and run rpm -V for each RPM returned.
For instance, running rpm -V on two common packages, Apache and PHP, shows me the following: # rpm -V php S.5....T c/etc/php.ini (php.ini has changed... which in this case means I've tweaked some of PHP's default settings.)
# rpm -V apache S.5....T c/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf missing/var/www/html/index.html missing/var/www/html/poweredby.png (Okay, I've changed httpd.conf, again pretty much a given, and I've removed a couple of the default files.)
I guess this website seems pretty unneeded to me. Granted, the above is just for RPM-based systems, but I'm sure Debian and ports have similar options. And to the people who have installed from source and say "What about me?", I say, first, never underestimate the power of a package management system, and second, check out CheckInstall, which allows you to create an RPM or DEB just by saying "checkinstall" instead of "make install". If you feel you must compile from source, checkinstall is a necessity! Using checkinstall gives you all the benefits of a package management system while still allowing for the flexibility that compiling from source provides.
Between checkinstall and up2date, I'm a very happy Red Hat customer. I just wish more people knew about some of the truly powerful things in package management systems (such as the verify command detailed above.) Package management systems are there for a reason. Use them!:)
My favorite is the DIGN case, which is absolutely gorgeous. It would look incredibly stylish in any home theater. You can even get the display for it and program it to show the MP3/DVD that is playing... I mean, the sky is the limit. Of course, it's $229.95 plus shipping, so you pay through the nose for those good looks.
If you're seriously interested in creating a home theater PC, I'd look no further than these cases.
I am a happy subscriber to ATTBI. Here in the Bay Area, they are absolutely great. No downtime, no major outages, as-advertised upload/download speeds (1.5MBps/256K for $45.95 a month.)
I am firmly against bandwidth caps, and here's why.
Bandwidth caps curb innovation completely. As long as people are stuck on 56K or bandwidth-limiting broadband, content providers will be unable to provide more innovative, interesting content. Case in point: I work for a popular radio show, maintaining their website. They have over 2GB of audio content available for streaming. They have videos from when the hosts have made TV appearances. They have no incentive to put all of these archives of their programs up on the 'Net if people can't afford to listen to them! Not only will radio broadcasters suffer, but so will musicians, movie makers, and especially independent artists who drive revenue and create a fanbase online via music and movie distribution.
Bandwidth caps don't let people try new things easily. Want to download the latest Linux distro? How about just updating your home server? I've sucked down hundreds of Red Hat updates for my home print/web server, not to mention Red Hat 7.3 and 8.0 ISOs. I know I have 5GB invested in Red Hat downloads alone. Had I not had severeal online (and free) resources with which to install Red Hat, I probably would have just installed Windows 2000. And so would millions of others for whom the Internet is the first method of distribution for Linux and other Free operating systems.
Bandwidth caps don't effectively solve the P2P problem. You say, "I can stop subsidising college geeks trying to collect 40Gb of ripped music for the hell of it." The ISPs can just as easily stop this by throttling P2P ports. Want to download P2P stuff? Fine, ports used primarily for P2P are now at 56K speeds. This is the single most effective way to make P2P have less of an impact on the other users of the service.
The moral is: don't punish people who like your service. I don't get punished by DirecTV and TiVo because I watch 20 hours of TV in a week instead of 2. True, Internet access requires more infrastructure per user than satellite does, but DirecTV has a per-user infrastructure cahrge as well (more satellites; installation; tech support). I expect that additional infrastructure charge to be covered in my monthly bill.
Even traditionally per-use models, such as long distance, are moving to flat-rate fees for those who use them a lot. You can now get unlimited long distance for $30 a month thanks to VoIP, which was spawned by the same technologies that made the Internet possible.
Don't cripple the growth of the Internet by advocating bandwidth limits. The only thing you will end up crippling is the continuing introduction of new, interesting websites with full-motion video and audio. The last thing we want is people defecting back to 56K, or worse, moving away from the Internet completely because "it's just not worth it."
Broadband has made the Internet thrive. Don't hold that progress back.
"I know the crashes are mainly due to the older games that the kids play which are not totally compatible with XP, but hey, they USED to run just fine under Windows98."
This comment is late in the discussion, and I know it probably won't get modded up because of that, but Windows XP has a great built-in solution to that problem. It's called Compatibility Mode.
If you right-click on the program icon, click properties, and click the Compatibility tab, you can tell Windows XP to run a program under "Windows 95 mode" or "Windows 98 mode." This makes the program think that it's running under an older version of Windows, so it (presumably) won't crash because of the new 2000/XP APIs.
Also, it sounds like you've made little effort to diagnose the crashes. Hey, if you want to learn Linux, and have your kids learn Linux, reading system logs is going to become necessary. Start with the syslog for XP. It's in Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Event Viewer. Look for any events in the System log around the time your computer was crashing.
I had a friend who was having major problems with XP. XP really doesn't crash that much on a good system. However, he was getting several BSODs a day. I asked him to look in his System log. Guess what it said?
"The driver has detected that device \Device\Harddisk0\DR0 has predicted that it will fail. Immediately back up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure may be imminent."
Um. Whoops.
System logs and Compatbility mode are your friends! I'm not trying to discourage you from running Linux, which I think you should at least check out, but you need to fix the problems you have with XP before you move to Linux. Don't go to Linux because "XP crashes" (it shouldn't crash unless you have a problem, which might show up in Linux as well) -- go with Linux because you like it better or it does what you need. In the meantime, troubleshot your XP box and try out compatibility mode -- they will make you a much happier camper.
"...[Windows 2000] has no real firewall built into it!"
Where do you draw the line? Microsoft is stuck between a rock and a hard place here. On one hand, if they don't put in a firewall, people will complain that they have to buy additional software or hardware to secure the OS (which is true.) On the other hand, if Microsoft does add a firewall, Norton, Symantec, and 50 other "personal firewall" software makers would scream bloody murder: "Microsoft is leveraging their OS monopoly to put us out of business!"
I'd guess the crappy firewall built into XP is a sort of compromise. On one hand, you don't want millions of unsecured Windows boxes running around on the Internet. So Microsoft surreptitiously adds an incoming-packets-only firewall to XP. Sure, it's a crappy firewall, and it doesn't offer real protection. But it keeps the firewall software makers at bay, and it keeps Microsoft out of the Justice Dept. gray area.
Most sysadmins would buy a hardware firewall or dedicated NAT device with firewall anyway... so at least in corporate settings, that problem is solved. Really, it's going to be tough for Microsoft to add any decent programs to the OS at this point, since they've already been found guilty of illegally bundling Internet Explorer. I'd watch for more stuff to be attached to Office or offered as a free download instead.
Wow. How disgusting.
on
ALICE vs. ALICE
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I don't know whether I'm more offended by that completely sexist remark, or the fact that it was modded up as "Funny".
By the way, even if you were joking, it's not funny. Personally, I find this incredibly insulting.
Oh, and for those of you who think it's okay to make these sorts of jokes, I highly suggest you read the "HOWTO Encourage Women in Linux" paper. It's a well-written summary of why so many women are scared to even go to computer events -- we're constantly stared at ("Oh my gosh! A female!"), heckled, and treated as sex objects even though those of us who dare to go usually have quite valid opinions.
I find this sort of behavior, even said as a joke, completely unacceptable. I would find it equally unacceptable if a similar joke were directed toward men, Jews, black people, or any other group. I seriously hope you give some thought to this next time you make a degarding commment about a group of people, even as a joke.
(Yes, I AM female. Damnit.)
For those of you on the West Coast...
on
Step 2, Groceries
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· Score: 4, Insightful
...both Safeway (might be IE-only) and Albertsons deliver groceries. Both charge a $9.95 delivery fee and deliver from local stores.
I must admit, though, that I'd rather see a startup company doing this than the already-established grocery stores. I was a happy Webvan customer, and I still think the model is quite viable. (Plus, I love the FreshDirect site design.) Here's hoping FreshDirect or a similar company takes a stab at this here in the Bay Area!
I absolutely agree. There is a program called VirtuaWin for Windows that does this, too. If you're using a Windows box and miss your virtual desktop goodness, now you can have it.
I set up VirtuaWin to use Ctrl-Left and Ctrl-Right to cycle around desktops, but it's pretty infinitely flexible -- you can assign key shortcuts to each desktop (like you're mentioning) as well.
This program is definitely worth checking out. It's even GPL -- how weird is that for a Windows program?;)
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, Google's home page is still not W3C compliant. They don't put in a doctype, which is the first problem, and few of the HTML tag attributes are quoted, resulting in 53 HTML errors.
I'd be much happier if they added 100 bytes or so to the page to make it completely W3C-compliant -- it's not that hard to do, and it would make them have one more bragging right over Yahoo and the others.
My experiences mirror this author's.
Having administered Linux web servers for several years, I decided to set up a dedicated Linux print server at home. My printer is an HP Color Laserjet 4500 which installs easily with pretty much any Windows version; I decided to forego buying the JetDirect ethernet card for the printer and use Linux as a print server instead.
I asked my friends what to use on my AMD K6-2 300 that had been commandeered for the purpose of running Linux (no dual-boot attempts here.) They said "Debian." I shouldn't have listened.
dselect is the most nightmarish application I have ever seen. I spent a good 15 minutes reading the help files, most of which were of no use to me. I then somehow managed to exit out of dselect by hitting some keystroke. BAM! I was dropped into a console prompt with absolutely no packages installed.
Aha! I thought. Apt-get to my rescue! After all, that was the saving grace of Debian. I tried "apt-get install kde." Not the right package name. Okay.... "apt-get install gnome." No? I just need to apt-get some sort of GUI!
With tedious Google searching, I finally figured out the sequence of commands to install KDE, and I was off and running. (I think I ended up installing some calculator program that required the KDE libraries, and it went ahead and installed KDE for me.)
I rebooted and was dropped into KDE.... exxcept that Debian wouldn't detect my USB mouse. I ended up having to go into #debian on freenode and get the instructions on how to edit some mouse configuration file just to make Debian understand that my mouse was on a USB port. After my mouse worked, I started using Debian, except that I got this weird C error dialog whenever I ran any application. I gave up and tried Red Hat 7.3 (then the latest) instead.
Red Hat was much easier for me to use. It detected my mouse during the install program, which was nice. However, it didn't detect my printer. I finally got the printer installed under the "control panel" sort of thing that KDE had, only to find out that most of the computer's applications didn't recognize that I was using CUPS! I went back to IRC and asked what the deal was. "Oh, that's normal," was the response. "If you set up the printer under KDE, only KDE applications will recognize it! Then you have to go in and tell all your other applications that the printer is now defined under CUPS instead of LPR. A window manager doesn't control your entire system! You should learn the difference between a window manager and the underlying OS."
By this time, I was miffed. If I set up a printer in Windows or Mac OS under the Control Panel, all the applications realize that that printer is now my default printer. Why in the world couldn't Mozilla (to use one example) do this? As far as I was concerned, the GUI control panel was the system control panel. To force users to learn the difference between window managers and the underlying OS and to force users to understand that changes they make in the window manager won't apply to the entire OS is a usability gaffe of such proportions that it hasn't been committed since Windows 95 took DOS out of the picture 8 years ago.
It took me several more hours to set up Samba to share my printer out to my Windows XP box, most notably because of a bug in Samba that prevented sharing printers to Windows XP. I then had the printer working with over 7 hours of work. It was a very long day for me.
I used the print server successfully for a few weeks. I then went away for Christmas and turned the computer off. When I came home and turned it on, there was no print server (and yes, I'd made sure that all the correct services were set to run on startup, which was yet another annoyance I had to consider in the 7-hour setup process.) Instead of being frustrated, I remembered that I had an old Pentium 75 in the garage that ran Windows 95. 15 minutes later, I had downloaded the Windows 95 drivers from HP's website, clicked the "enable printer sharing" button,
I do some contract work for a nationally-syndicated home improvement radio show, so I'm quite familiar with the whole Clear Channel buyout process. Since some of you may not know how this works, I'll explain it as succinctly as I can.
Let's say you own a radio station. Your radio station plays Top 40 stuff. You have hired some local DJs from the nearby college to play music, and you have some fun with various weekend and Friday night shows that showcase some local artists. You have a playlist that is based both on what other Top 40 stations are playing (the "popular" music), and requests from your listeners. You're doing well, but you have to maintain a staff to sell ads, and you're finding it harder and harder to do this.
Clear Channel comes in and offers to buy your radio station. Now, Clear Channel has enough money so that they can make you an offer you can't refuse. You acquiesce and agree to become a Clear Channel station.
Clear Channel places your station into one of seven formats. Everyone who listens to radio is now clear on what these formats are, because that's pretty much all that remains on radio today. There's "Top 40", which is what your station will be. There are also "easy listening", "talk", and four others.
Clear Channel fires 4 out of your 6 local DJs and replaces them with DJs from other areas. This is how Clear Channel makes its money: it can pay one "regional" DJ $15 an hour to broadcast out to 4 regional stations, or you and 3 other stations could each pay $12 an hour to 4 DJs to do the same thing. Thus, the complaints from the listeners start to arrive about losing the "local" feel, but by then there's nothing you can do--it's all in Clear Channel's hands.
Clear Channel takes a look at your programming and decides what you will and won't continue to play. In the case of Top 40, they give you a playlist. In the case of talk stations, they give you a list of syndicated shows and force you to drop everything that isn't on the list. (This is where On The House comes in-- every time Clear Channel buys a station out, they force the station to drop On The House in favor of their home improvement guy. We've lost several affiliates this way.)
Let's continue with the analogy of your (er, Clear Channel's) Top 40 station. You're now forced to drop the local bits since you only have two local DJs left (and in all likelihood, they're both doing the morning show, since that's the most lucrative time for radio.) You're now fed a playlist. Clear Channel has national playlists. That means that whatever your station is playing is the same stuff that every other Top 40 station owned by Clear Channel is playing. Do you wonder why all radio stations seem to play the same stuff? If they're owned by Clear Channel, it's because they are playing the same songs.
How does Clear Channel come up with these songs? They test-market in one market. ONE. In your case, the Top 40 stuff is tested in places like New Mexico. Yep, listeners in New Mexico are deciding what your station is going to play! Welcome to Clear Channel.
If you're wondering why radio seems to have gone downhill, you can look no further than Clear Channel. Sadly, DJs are pretty much corporate minions these days. They no longer get to spin new local tracks, and they don't have a choice on what to air. Many of them aren't even in the studio for half or more of the time they're on air -- they pre-record bits and play them as their segment progresses.
It's a sad time for radio. Fortunately, I believe the independents like On The House will survive. The independent radio stations will find their niche as well. I believe that Clear Channel will eventually feel the consumer backlash, much like we lashed out against high CD prices.
Please don't shrug your shoulders about the new FCC regulations being suspended, though. Loosening these regulations is a bad thing. Clear Channel doesn't need to hurt radio any more than it already has.
"I simply cannot bring myself to pay the up2date tax when apt-get is free and just plain works better."
Er, what? up2date is free. Red Hat requires you to register the system with Red Hat to obtain updates and fill out a a survey every few months to keep your system up to date.
If filling out a survey isn't your thing, or you have several systems to maintain, Red Hat provides unlimited access to errata, plus the newest release ISOs, for $60 a year per system. That's FIVE DOLLARS A MONTH. I'm sure you spend a heck of a lot more time than that "tracking down and trying to install release-specific RPMs." If your company can't afford to spend five dollars a month on updates for their servers, it has larger problems.
It honestly sounds like you haven't really researched your options. Do yourself a favor and go check out the purchase options for Red Hat errata. Seriously, $60 a year is a deal for access to errata plus the newest ISOs!
Did anyone (including the person who posted this story) actually read the article?
If you read the article, the first thing that jumps out is the date: June 1 to September 3, 2001. In fact, if you'll notice, the IP address they refer to (http://139.142.46.159) is long gone.
Reading further, it is revealed that this was a museum exhibit at the Mendel Art Gallery in Canada in 2001. The link cited shows the proposal they sent to the museum, which is why it reads rather oddly ("This will ideally allow for gallery staff to replace the fly.") The museum accepted the proposal, as can be seen here, at the museum's website.
Please, editors, do your homework before posting these stories. It's an interesting story, but quite dated.
"For 2003, [Overture] now expects to see revenue of more than $1 billion and earnings per share of 60 cents to 70 cents. Analysts had been expecting the company to report earnings of 91 cents per share on revenue of $1.03 billion."
Wow! Overture has better earnings per share than Microsoft! They've also beaten eBay, which is generally considered one of the most profitable Internet companies. Is pay-for-placement really so valuable that it creates a billion-dollar company? Can someone who understands this business model explain how it's making so much money?
If Overture is truly an Internet-only success story, it bodes well for the rest of us who have jobs that rely on the Internet. More profitable companies mean that the Internet will be taken more seriously and that there will be more Internet jobs, which is always a good thing!
This post is from the Slashdot Troll Archive.
:)
Here's the link to this particular post: Lex Talionis is a morally bankrupt code
If you're going to troll, may I suggest The "Moon": A Ridiculous Liberal Myth? It's one of my personal favorites.
Although I think laws such as the junk fax law are a step in the right direction, the problem I see with most spam is that the headers have been forged to the point of illegitimacy. Sure, if they include a link to a website, you could go after the person or people listed in the WHOIS record, but it would be easy for the administrative contact to claim that he or she didn't send the spam.
Sears is an easy target -- they probably sent semi-legitimate spam that included contact and/or removal information, as well as the Sears website. However, I doubt that $500 will steer Sears in the right direction regarding spam. For $500, it's easier for them to write a check than to pursue it in court. I'd guess they made several thousand dollars off the spam mail, and that the $500 was written off as a cost of doing business.
My point is, that between completely illegitimate spam that doesn't even have any real contact information, and companies that make a lot of money off of spam and who don't mind writing a $500 check every once in a while, this law won't be very effective.
I will continue to argue that spam is a technical problem and needs a technical solution to solve it. Ultimately, even if the big companies like Sears stop spamming, there will always be the spammers who send out 100 million penis enlargement spam mails with fake headers and fake return addresses that render the spam nearly impossible to trace. The illegitimate spam problem won't be solved by laws -- it will be solved by the intelligence of the Internet community. I'd rather see this solved by technical prowess than by laws that will only encourage spammers to fake their mail headers to avoid lawsuits.
It's great that someone is handing out free certs, but CA Cert isn't trusted by Internet Explorer.
If 90%+ of your users are going to get the warning "The security certificate was issued by a company you have chosen not to trust," you might as well be signing your own certificates. The whole point of having a certificate is that your users won't get that pop-up window when they go to buy something from your store.
Thanks for the info, but until CA Cert gets in the trusted list for IE, it's not worth it... even if it's free.
I installed RealOne recently, and much to my dismay, they have removed the preference setting to kill "StartCenter". StartCenter is the annoying thing that sits in your system tray and starts up with your computer. In RealOne Player, not only does it have a systray icon, but it also places little pop-up "message" windows on your computer! It's completely disgusting.
;)
There are no preference settings in RealOne Player to disable this, so I thought I'd post this here, since I'm sure this thread will be filled with people who hate RealOne as much as I do.
The startup code for the popup window is hidden in your registry. The easiest way to get rid of it is to use 'msconfig', which comes with every version of Windows except for 2000. (In a minute, I'll explain how to get rid of it on Windows 2000 as well.)
To use msconfig, go to Start->Run and type in 'msconfig' (no quotes.) Go to the Startup tab. You should see an entry beginning with "real". Uncheck the box next to this entry so that it won't load on startup. In addition, look for an entry called "eventsvc" whose command is "c:\Program Files\Common Files\Real..." This is part of RealPlayer as well, and you can uncheck it safely. (While you're at it, this is the place you can disable those useless ATI control panels and other muckety-muck that likes to sit down in the system tray. Don't worry; you can always go back and re-enable the services later if you disable something you need.)
Once you've unchecked whatever you don't want to load, hit "OK". You will be prompted to restart your computer to make the changes take effect. Go ahead and restart. When you log in next time, you'll see a box explaining that your system is now in "diagnostic" mode. Check the box that says "Don't show me this again" and click OK to be on your merry way (hopefully with a faster bootup time.)
In Windows 2000, you can manually edit the Registry to get rid of these keys. Unlike msconfig, there is no going back, so make sure you know what you're doing! Look in HKLM or HKCU under Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run. You should find the little bugger there. Delete it.
(Standard disclaimer: If you screw up your computer doing this, I am not responsible. If you don't know what a key is, it may be best to leave it alone. Doing a Google search may help you figure out what is necessary and what isn't. In general, leave anything that has to do with your hardware alone, especially modem software, as your modem may require it to work properly.)
Also, when installing RealPlayer, always take the time to read the installer to know what it's doing! You can, and should, disable most of the crap it tries to do, such as opening MP3s and auto-updating your RealPlayer with the latest advertisements. Try "compact" mode as well--that should kill most of the remaining advertisements.
I hope this helps those of you who are (unfortunately) faced with RealPlayer's wrath. The tips above can help to tame your system and make it a bit nicer to use your computer.
As always, if you have relatives who use RealPlayer, or you maintain it in an office setting, it may be best to perform that procedure on every computer. There's really no need for workers to be distracted by RealPlayer advertising. If you're using msconfig, don't forget to restart the computer and disable that "diagnostic" mode box that pops up, as well, or your less technically-inclined relatives/co-workers may be calling you for help!
..."it does irk me that the service ... is ... the stuff you can get on line for free..."
Great! Let me know where I can go to a website and see every Steve Martin movie that is coming up in the next two weeks, with specific channel numbers, dates, and times.
And which website was it where I could go and click on MOVIES, and then type in "Steve Martin", and have it record all of those movies automatically?
That is why I pay TiVo $4.95 a month.
"I don't like the program guide fee required on current PVRs."
You know, this subject comes up every time an article featuring the TiVo is posted, and every time someone gets "+5, Insightful" for whining about the TiVo monthly fee.
My TiVo monthly fee is $4.95. Yes, less than five dollars a month. That's cheaper than the burrito I ate for lunch today! For everything that TiVo gives me, $5 is chump change. Plus, you can do yearly and/or lifetime subscriptions. It's also lumped in with my DirecTV bill, so I don't get a separate "TiVo bill" that I have to worry about paying. What is the big deal?
I get 500+ channels plus HBO, local channels, and TiVo for less than $60 a month. Digital cable would give me the same thing without TiVo for $85/month. You want value? Buy a DirecTV+TiVo. But please, stop whining about the subscription. Every damn TiVo owner in the world will tell you that the $4.95 is money well-spent on a TiVo.
The only people I hear complaining are people who think the TiVo is a glorified VCR. The TiVo is not a VCR with a monthly fee! It is a totally different way to watch TV. It frees you from cheesy "primetime" TV. I told my TiVo to tape every Steve Martin movie that was on, regardless of any channel it was on. Every once in a while I turn the TiVo on to find a Steve Martin movie recorded and waiting for me to watch! I can order and record Pay-Per-View with one click. I have completely foregone Blockbuster (and I say "Good Riddance!") Five dollars a month is worth it to watch every Steve Martin classic, get rid of video store late fees, and give up on crappy primetime TV. (Hmm, the Simpsons was on at 6PM... I think I'll just watch that at 9PM instead of whatever is on now!)
I do not work at TiVo. I do not work at DirecTV. I am, however, a satisfied customer of both. (Oh, and has your cable company lowered your monthly cable bill this year? DirecTV lowered my monthly bill TWICE in 2002. What more can I ask for?)
I watched the Quicktime keynote with great interst, hoping that Jobs would finally introduce a 4-pound notebook. I've been waiting for one for a while, so I'm really excited that Apple finally introduced one!
Unfortunately, however, the notebook doesn't include DVI-out support, so my monitor would fall back to VGA mode if I tried to use the notebook with it. Does anyone know if Apple or a third party plans to offer a PC Card with DVI support? Margi had one, but it's only 4MB... not quite enough for this particular monitor.
Also, one thing Apple keeps failing to address is the #1 reason I haven't switched to a Mac. Steve, where are the software trade-in incentives? I own Photoshop 6 and 7, Dreamweaver MX, and Microsoft Office XP for the PC. What on Earth is keeping Apple and/or other vendors from offering trade-in incentives? Why can I not trade in my two boxed Photoshop-for-PC copies and receive Photoshop 7 for Mac OS X? The same goes for Dreamweaver MX. The cost to move to a Mac is almost doubled by the $1500 worth of software that I already have for my PC.
Here's hoping Apple will start to address this issue, especially since the platform is geared toward video developers and graphic designers -- two markets whose people invest heavily in expensive software.
"HD is a retail shop, not a technology shop. ...As far as the head retailers were concerned, IT was nothing more than a 'cost center.'"
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Home Depot will never be as big as Wal-Mart. Home Depot thinks of IT as a hole that the company is constantly pouring money into; Wal-Mart relentlessly uses IT to further its goals of getting the lowest cost from suppliers. (The definitive article on Wal-Mart and technology.)
Home Depot will never be a leader in the industry if it continues to view IT as an expense rather than an investment. Your post was an excellent example of how retailers tend to forget that technology, when used properly, can not only form the core of the business, but strengthen existing product lines. Home Depot's executive staff most likely looks at Wal-Mart and ask "How do they do that?" The answer lies in Wal-Mart's aggressive stance on technology adoption.
In fact, Wal-Mart and Home Depot are even compared here, where Wal-Mart's CIO is asked whether or not it will make a difference if competitors use RFID tags. (RFID tags are Wal-Mart's next big frontier.) "The challenge is to keep innovating faster than the competition can copy us," he says.
If what you're saying really is true of Home Depot, expect Wal-Mart to keep swallowing Home Depot's business. Wal-Mart has never labeled itself as "just a retail shop," as you label Home Depot. Home Depot doesn't have the competitive advantage, nor does it sound like they know where to spend to get that advantage. I expect that Wal-mart will remain a leader for some time to come in the retail space. This quote sums up what you're seeing nicely:
"'I think Wal-Mart views technology in a different light than most retailers,' says Peter Abell, retail research director at AMR Research. 'It's not only an integral part of the company, but it's where the leaders of the company can come from.'"
This is the direction in which Home Depot must go in order to become truly successful at lowering costs and increasing productivity. Unfortunately for Home Depot, Wal-Mart is already there, and getting further and further ahead...
"One of the press releases on the linked page answers 'why?'."
You know, some people bang their heads on the wall when they see bad code. Others get really frustrated when they see bad design, or bad grammar, or any number of things.
I get frustrated when I see a project whose founders obviously think is "cool," but which completely fails to answer the question "Why should I care?"
Obviously, you found that answer, and you certainly did better than I did.
I read the Slashdot summary, which completely failed to answer the question "Why should I care?" Then I clicked on the link, which also completely failed to answer that question. It's really frustrating to see the pertinent information on the site buried in a freakin' press release that very few people will ever read. (I mean, I'm guessing you clicked on the press release as sort of a last resort, and it's certainly not the place where most people would go to find out why this project is cool.)
The lesson I would like other geeks to learn from this article is damn, people, if you're doing something cool, put it in bold type on your front page! Say "We are here because we want to kick some ass. We're going to kick the ass of the domain name commissioner because we want to try out the latest cool geek technologies and this is the best way for us to do it! Hey, JOIN US! Help us out!"
The first rule of sales is that you have to convince the prospect that your product matters. This holds true whether you're selling encyclopedias door-to-door or whether you're trying to convince your boss to fund the purchase of new server equipment! Unfortunately, geeks have this tendency to throw out facts and just hope that people make the connection between those facts and their product being awesome. It really comes to light in a situation like this, where 95% of the audience doesn't know anything about New Zealand's domain structure or why a new second-level domain is a ground-breaking, earth-shattering, AWESOME achievement! That's why almost all of the posts here have been either "Huh?" or "Why should I care?"
As much as you may hate sales; as much as you want to believe that the facts will speak for themselves... take this article and the responses to it as a reason why they won't. Next time you're trying to convince someone that they absolutely should go with Linux, or that they absolutely, without a doubt, should use this piece of awesome software for their projects, answer the question that they will always think of first: "Why should I care?" If you can answer that, you've won half the battle.
If you can't answer that, and you try to just throw out facts and hope that they speak for themselves, you'll get the same response that these guys got...
"Huh?"
Wow. Upon reading the summary, my first thought was "Why do I care?" I mean, geek.nz... they're just going to put up a website or something, right?
.org.nz, .net.nz and .co.nz. (I don't know whether I should blame the story submitter, the Slashdot editor, or the guys who wrote the webpage for the completely ordinary, ho-hum writeup, since all of them seemed to assume that we understood exactly what they were trying to do.)
.co.nz, .net.nz, and .org.nz based on the criteria in the linked PDF above (namely, that they have a long-standing common interest and should get a second-level domain for it.)
Actually, they're trying to get a domain extension of sorts, much like the pre-existing
From what I gather, the domain name commissioner of New Zealand is in charge of approving second-level domains. There is a list of criteria for these domains here (which is linked from the geek.nz website.) These people are trying to put geek.nz in the same realm as
The linked website is pretty terrible in terms of explaining to the rest of the world these geeks' true motivation to do this. Okay, you want a second-level domain, and you meet the criteria... and? Is this to make your government open up its domain name system to anyone who has a legitimate interest? Is it just a cool project? Unfortunately, the website that they made shows none of their motivation for doing this.
As it is, it seems to be a cool novelty, but these geeks failed to express any sort of goal for this project. Interesting? I suppose. Slashdot-worthy? Not really.
For Red Hat-based systems, at least, rpm -V will do pretty much exactly what you're looking for.
... The (mnemonically emBoldened) character denotes failure of the corresponding --verify test:
/etc/php.ini
/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf /var/www/html/index.html /var/www/html/poweredby.png
:)
From the man page for rpm:
The general form of an rpm verify command is
rpm {-V|--verify} [select-options] [--nodeps] [--nofiles] [--nomd5] [--noscripts]
Verifying a package compares information about the installed files in the package with
information about the files taken from the package metadata stored in the rpm database. Among other things, verifying compares the size, MD5 sum, permissions, type, owner and group of each file. Any discrepencies are displayed.
S file Size differs
M Mode differs (includes permissions and file type)
5 MD5 sum differs
D Device major/minor number mis-match
L readLink(2) path mis-match
U User ownership differs
G Group ownership differs
T mTime differs
So while that's a bit cryptic, a shell script run once every x days (30? 14?) should tell you what files have changed. All you would have to do is run rpm -qa to grab a list of the packages in your system, and then loop through the list and run rpm -V for each RPM returned.
For instance, running rpm -V on two common packages, Apache and PHP, shows me the following:
# rpm -V php
S.5....T c
(php.ini has changed... which in this case means I've tweaked some of PHP's default settings.)
# rpm -V apache
S.5....T c
missing
missing
(Okay, I've changed httpd.conf, again pretty much a given, and I've removed a couple of the default files.)
I guess this website seems pretty unneeded to me. Granted, the above is just for RPM-based systems, but I'm sure Debian and ports have similar options. And to the people who have installed from source and say "What about me?", I say, first, never underestimate the power of a package management system, and second, check out CheckInstall, which allows you to create an RPM or DEB just by saying "checkinstall" instead of "make install". If you feel you must compile from source, checkinstall is a necessity! Using checkinstall gives you all the benefits of a package management system while still allowing for the flexibility that compiling from source provides.
Between checkinstall and up2date, I'm a very happy Red Hat customer. I just wish more people knew about some of the truly powerful things in package management systems (such as the verify command detailed above.) Package management systems are there for a reason. Use them!
"Haiku is for batch files."
.
;)
Hehehe...
for each file in
do sed s slash leaf slash tree
on every line found; done
Okay, so that's a shell script... but it was just as fun to write.
"I would rather see a PC made the same size/look as a standard piece of audio equipment..."
There are several to choose from. Check ExoticPC (which is where I bought my case.) In particular, check out the DIGN Home Theater case, the D-Vine case, and their CoolerMaster line.
My favorite is the DIGN case, which is absolutely gorgeous. It would look incredibly stylish in any home theater. You can even get the display for it and program it to show the MP3/DVD that is playing... I mean, the sky is the limit. Of course, it's $229.95 plus shipping, so you pay through the nose for those good looks.
If you're seriously interested in creating a home theater PC, I'd look no further than these cases.
I am firmly against bandwidth caps, and here's why.
The moral is: don't punish people who like your service. I don't get punished by DirecTV and TiVo because I watch 20 hours of TV in a week instead of 2. True, Internet access requires more infrastructure per user than satellite does, but DirecTV has a per-user infrastructure cahrge as well (more satellites; installation; tech support). I expect that additional infrastructure charge to be covered in my monthly bill.
Even traditionally per-use models, such as long distance, are moving to flat-rate fees for those who use them a lot. You can now get unlimited long distance for $30 a month thanks to VoIP, which was spawned by the same technologies that made the Internet possible.
Don't cripple the growth of the Internet by advocating bandwidth limits. The only thing you will end up crippling is the continuing introduction of new, interesting websites with full-motion video and audio. The last thing we want is people defecting back to 56K, or worse, moving away from the Internet completely because "it's just not worth it."
Broadband has made the Internet thrive. Don't hold that progress back.
"I know the crashes are mainly due to the older games that the kids play which are not totally compatible with XP, but hey, they USED to run just fine under Windows98."
This comment is late in the discussion, and I know it probably won't get modded up because of that, but Windows XP has a great built-in solution to that problem. It's called Compatibility Mode.
If you right-click on the program icon, click properties, and click the Compatibility tab, you can tell Windows XP to run a program under "Windows 95 mode" or "Windows 98 mode." This makes the program think that it's running under an older version of Windows, so it (presumably) won't crash because of the new 2000/XP APIs.
Also, it sounds like you've made little effort to diagnose the crashes. Hey, if you want to learn Linux, and have your kids learn Linux, reading system logs is going to become necessary. Start with the syslog for XP. It's in Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Event Viewer. Look for any events in the System log around the time your computer was crashing.
I had a friend who was having major problems with XP. XP really doesn't crash that much on a good system. However, he was getting several BSODs a day. I asked him to look in his System log. Guess what it said?
"The driver has detected that device \Device\Harddisk0\DR0 has predicted that it will fail. Immediately back up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure may be imminent."
Um. Whoops.
System logs and Compatbility mode are your friends! I'm not trying to discourage you from running Linux, which I think you should at least check out, but you need to fix the problems you have with XP before you move to Linux. Don't go to Linux because "XP crashes" (it shouldn't crash unless you have a problem, which might show up in Linux as well) -- go with Linux because you like it better or it does what you need. In the meantime, troubleshot your XP box and try out compatibility mode -- they will make you a much happier camper.
"...[Windows 2000] has no real firewall built into it!"
Where do you draw the line? Microsoft is stuck between a rock and a hard place here. On one hand, if they don't put in a firewall, people will complain that they have to buy additional software or hardware to secure the OS (which is true.) On the other hand, if Microsoft does add a firewall, Norton, Symantec, and 50 other "personal firewall" software makers would scream bloody murder: "Microsoft is leveraging their OS monopoly to put us out of business!"
I'd guess the crappy firewall built into XP is a sort of compromise. On one hand, you don't want millions of unsecured Windows boxes running around on the Internet. So Microsoft surreptitiously adds an incoming-packets-only firewall to XP. Sure, it's a crappy firewall, and it doesn't offer real protection. But it keeps the firewall software makers at bay, and it keeps Microsoft out of the Justice Dept. gray area.
Most sysadmins would buy a hardware firewall or dedicated NAT device with firewall anyway... so at least in corporate settings, that problem is solved. Really, it's going to be tough for Microsoft to add any decent programs to the OS at this point, since they've already been found guilty of illegally bundling Internet Explorer. I'd watch for more stuff to be attached to Office or offered as a free download instead.
I don't know whether I'm more offended by that completely sexist remark, or the fact that it was modded up as "Funny".
By the way, even if you were joking, it's not funny. Personally, I find this incredibly insulting.
Oh, and for those of you who think it's okay to make these sorts of jokes, I highly suggest you read the "HOWTO Encourage Women in Linux" paper. It's a well-written summary of why so many women are scared to even go to computer events -- we're constantly stared at ("Oh my gosh! A female!"), heckled, and treated as sex objects even though those of us who dare to go usually have quite valid opinions.
I find this sort of behavior, even said as a joke, completely unacceptable. I would find it equally unacceptable if a similar joke were directed toward men, Jews, black people, or any other group. I seriously hope you give some thought to this next time you make a degarding commment about a group of people, even as a joke.
(Yes, I AM female. Damnit.)
...both Safeway (might be IE-only) and Albertsons deliver groceries. Both charge a $9.95 delivery fee and deliver from local stores.
I must admit, though, that I'd rather see a startup company doing this than the already-established grocery stores. I was a happy Webvan customer, and I still think the model is quite viable. (Plus, I love the FreshDirect site design.) Here's hoping FreshDirect or a similar company takes a stab at this here in the Bay Area!
"The next logical step is virtual desktops."
;)
I absolutely agree. There is a program called VirtuaWin for Windows that does this, too. If you're using a Windows box and miss your virtual desktop goodness, now you can have it.
I set up VirtuaWin to use Ctrl-Left and Ctrl-Right to cycle around desktops, but it's pretty infinitely flexible -- you can assign key shortcuts to each desktop (like you're mentioning) as well.
This program is definitely worth checking out. It's even GPL -- how weird is that for a Windows program?