There are scientists who have been censored by appointees of the current administration.
Anti-Evolutionism isn't just a quaint psychosis experienced by the fringe. It is an anti-science movement which denies, with alternative psuedo-science, anything that conflicts with a theistic view.
That's dangerous. That's delusional.
Science offers repeatable results verified in *reality*. Denying "repeatable results" because they conflict with your world view is at best akin to a child throwing a tantrum ("It's NOOOOOT true!!!). Or at worst true psychosis.
So if you want a candidate that will deny real information when it's given to them- please... vote for a creationist. That is what you will be getting.
"It's classic FUD, but I don't know if MS would actually sue anyone. Unlike SCO Microsoft has a bottomless pit of money, and yet MS may not be large enough to successfully try and destroy Linux via patent infringement lawsuits."
I agree completely with you, except:
Linux datacenters (I run one), admins, and developers should be thanking their lucky stars for IBM. They and they alone have enough legal strength and money to scare Microsoft. But it gets better!
Wait and watch for the interesting times as the SCO/EVERYBODY lawsuits wind down.
Prediction: IBM sues Microsoft into the crapper once the SCO thing is resolved. At the end of the ten year lawsuit, Microsoft is irrelevant- but IBM have open sourced it's patent portfolio.
Then again... I am probably wrong and we'll be running Windows "Orbital View" and paying a penny a keystroke.
What I want to know is what is a "MAC address request". I've never seen one. I've seen DHCP requests, ARP requests, even AARP requests- but not a MAC address request.
I didn't know MAC addresses were assigned dynamically.
"If this is true, I honestly don't know what to say anymore.
I'm moving to Antarctica."
This isn't anything new.
The last time we had anything like this going on was during and after the Nixon administration. In those days it was an FBI program called COINTELPRO- which infiltrated (CIA style) and collected evidence against a semi-terrorist organization called the "Weather Underground". In fact their evidence was so tainted by rights violations, that with the exception of David Gilbert, who got a life rap for murder, they all walked.
Gilbert of course was involved in an armored car robbery in New York, and charged in New York, so even he walked in regard to the COINTELPRO charges.
The others, who used to blow things up (though they warned people about the bombs so that no one would get hurt), were summarily released one after another once the federal courts got hold of the evidence of FBI wrong doing.
In fact, the evidence that freed them, was in fact STOLEN by them out of an FBI office in Mississippi (If memory serves).
This is nothing new. And under this administration not suprising. And the courts did the right thing... evidence that is "fruit of the poisoned vine" should never be allowed.
Let's hope this latest flap is far less agregious.
"How is it "logical" that IBM needs to open up their commercial products to entrench service standards? The standards should stand on their own. Open source products can embrace them regardless if commercial software remains closed."
It depends on your perspective.
On one hand, maintaining control over closed code creates a monopoly over the ability to *support* the product in question. While opensourcing the code creates competition in the support market.
So the question people should be asking relates to where you want the competition to be?
In other words, Redhat is successful because they support their product as well as or better than their competition, who also have access to the same source code as all other people who support the code. Microsoft, on the other hand, has the best support for their products, and all of the companies that support Microsoft products are reliant on Microsoft for technical information and patches. So there is limited competition in the market for support of Microsoft products, because support of Microsoft products, as a product, is controlled by Microsoft.
Just my opinion. The FOSS model is universally better.
"If this is true, and it seems pretty likely it is, it's a pretty serious matter in my opinion."
For the love of Pete!
How many times does this story have to repeat itself. The first was the supression of information out of NASA where scientific press releases/papers were altered by political appointees to better reflect the anti-evolution/anti-climate change stance of the present administration.
IF this is true?
Even a former CIA director tells a bleak tale of intelligence being skewed based on presupposition.
"That's the question posed. Well, we only have to look at the market penetration of Windows to know that question is rather meaningless. Ubuntu is a good distribution. "Best distribution" is a bit presumptuous as people who would be interested in a Linux distribution have different needs."
I hope this isn't taken as off topic.
It's the best distribution based on the perception of it's userbase, where hardcore IT professionals are in the minority.
Not that Ubuntu is *bad*, it's a great little desktop distro, which I may even deploy in my organization. But anyone who thinks that Ubuntu is as hardened, fast, or as stable as RHE, Debian, CentOS or a BSD variant is just fooling themselves.
Ubuntu is *easy*. That sells. It *looks good*. That sells. And it *is good*. That sells.
Ubuntu deserves it's place in the pantheon. But it is niether a workstation or server OS.
That server distribution of theirs makes me *shiver*. If one of my admins deployed Ubuntu into my datacenter I'd fire them on the spot.
"I fear that it is a real possibility however. The cost of fabs, R&D, and marketing have grown so much in the last few years that it would be VERY difficult for any newcomer to compete with Intel unless they managed to develop a completely different and low cost way to manufacture their chips... or they are very heavily backed."
AMD is not a newcomer. And the speed "crown" has passed between AMD and Intel a couple of times since the K6 and probably will again.
Maybe I'm missing something, but it appears to me that neither Intel nor AMD are ill equipped to compete, in the long term of course.
Your reply illustrates marvelously the difference between what enterprise users need compared to their desktop peers.
My apologies if I appeared to be commenting in the desktop direction. Ironically, I had to defend Linux use to a board of directors today. They had been FUD'd by an article in Fortune.
Having been successful in that meeting, plans for the integration of Linux based desktops are still in the works. Although, Suse will not be considered.
As a dying and irrelevant company, Novell aquires a linux distribution to save themselves, and summarily get in bed with Microsoft, who essentially would prefer to either cage or completely destroy FOSS. Within this "tasty little eggroll" is the fact that Novell seems to forget that FOSS isn't just software but a social movement.
It is a software movement pushed forward by and large by the people who actually are responsible for running large segments of the internet and computer infrastructure worldwide. Linux has been taken well past Linus Torvald's initial vision because there was a *need* for an alternative in the data center.
Novell should be worried- very worried. First, their distribution isn't all that good in my experience. Debian and Redhat basically bury it in important areas (cost, stability and Q&A- pick two). Second, they get in bed with Microsoft, a company that provides more frustration per byte than any other software company in history.
I revert to a lame Star Trek quote:
Spock: "They are dying" (in reference to the Klingons)
Kirk: "Let them die!!"
I've never used Suse, but have tested the distro, and talked with their reps. I never used them because I think their product is below par. The Microsoft deal again reinforces the decisions I made for clients who expend a great deal of money on data infrastructure and expect a minimum of frustration.
Evolution works people. Sit back and grab a coffee.
There is something divisive about this game. I played for about a year. Within the environment of the game long standing friendships were destroyed over in-game politics.
My response to the experience was to stop playing Eve. Most of the reason I am even interested in playing MMO's is to do something with my buds. If the environment of the game screws up my friendships- I generally bail.
It's a shame. I really like Eve. I'm a sucker for space type games.
As an aside, the borgifying of player communities by game publishers also *causes* these kinds of issues. In the old days MUDs and online games (like Unreal/Quake series) didn't tie the game into a larger community controlled by the publisher. These days it's next to impossible to maintain a clan/guild/corp and an associated website since the games themselves promote a divisive community through their own portals.
Here's hoping some MMO publisher gets a clue and releases both the client and server software packages allowing independent communities to build their own worlds. This would eliminate a lot of crap.
But... there's too much margin built into that $14.00 a month.
Just as an aside. I may have just gotten way too deep into the Redhat camp... however....
RPM for all it's frustrations is just dandy with an apt or yum frontend. The other point is that most people running RH are running servers. We're geeks anyway, don't usually go outside of the core software set, and use Redhat because of the Q&A testing.
RPM kinda sucks for resolving dependencies, assuming you don't know what they are.
Aside from Debian, RHE3/4 is the only game going in my book. And I can't tell the president of a company that Debian is supported by a company they have heard of...
I've got 36 internet facing servers I manage. Next year it could be as high as 200. If nothing else RPM presents a known quantity which represents a certain level of security.
In the 1990's there was a company called Resnova Software which made the NovaLink Professional Information Server. It was a fantastic product, where an experienced tech could fashion an AOL-like experience thus producing a mini-online service.
Well, my business was built around this technology, and having designed school networks for some time I invested a lot of time and money (Along with other people) in creating a nice safe little internet service for kiddies in school. They had a pretty user interface, access to Gopher, the k12 newsgroups, teacher assignments, class materials- all accessible from either in the school, through a standard ppp dialup account, or a local dial-in number to our NOC- same pretty GUI.
My customers loved it. So did the kids.
And along comes Microsoft. As I understand it, they wanted another technology ResNova created called "Personal Web Sharing". They made Res Nova an offer they couldn't refuse, the purchase was approved by the FTC, and Microsoft walked away with the whole company.
But what the FTC didn't consider, or didn't know enough to consider was this:
Microsoft walked away with the tech it wanted, killed the Nova Link Professional Information Server, and sold the rights to use personal web sharing to at least one other company- and that would be Apple Computer Inc.
I keep sitting here hoping... in fact praying (an I'm not a religious guy)... that SOMEBODY gets a court to understand how strongly the antitrust laws could be applied to something like this. Simple Points:
1. Microsoft historically cannot secure it's own operating system.
2. Microsoft wants to charge for securing it's operating system.
3. Microsoft makes it difficult for *others* to secure it's operating system.
Yeesh...
1. Ford historically makes cars that explode.
2. Ford wants to charge extra for a car with "options" that make it not explode.
3. Ford makes it difficult for others to make Ford cars not explode.
Get the gun Gertrude, I'm gonna join with old Uncle Ben.
The above poster is right, but hasn't hit on the most critical issue:
How the hell do you get a nuclear device to re-enter the atmosphere successfully with targeting accuracy? You actually don't. You can't. Not without a re-entry system that is so advanced it's more expensive than the total paylod of the weapon itself.
Look at the re-entry systems we have (there have been two basic ones).
First, there's coating the bottom of a capsule with Corning Ware, and hoping to god the heat shield holds as a capsule hits the atmosphere at 25,000 MPH. That's the Apollo/Mercury method.
Second, there's the method of tiling the spacecraft with a material that does not absorb heat in the first place, which keeps an aluminum airframe (ok it's not much of an "airframe"- it's a flying brick [given enough thrust pigs fly- yada yada]) cool enough to survive the return. That's the Space Shuttle method.
And then there's the warhead(s) having to withstand 9 to 12 G's during re-entry. And actually getting the thing to target the right place considering the re-entry window for any particular destination is so small given the very narrow windows through which somethign can survive re-entry. You could build a massive re-entry system for let's say 9 missiles which would launch once the re-entry vehicle was in the atmosphere. But that option is expensive, and who wants fissile material bounced around at 12 G's?
So what is intended to replace earth to space launch systems? (and thus remove reentry for things and humans): The Space Elevator!
The Space Elevator is not really much of a delivery system (for warfare purposes- it has one destination).
Space based weapons? Maybe anti missle energy systems that can be just launched and left in orbit. But warhead paylods from space?
Microsoft is probably the most scared of IBM (or should be) because IBM is one company they cannot crush. IBM is also just as vicious as Microsoft while litigating. Though in a relative sense IBM has better business ethics and a better corporate culture.
What we should be worried about is who ends up with all the intellectual property after IBM get's through evicerating SCO.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not a stupid issue.
There are scientists who have been censored by appointees of the current administration.
Anti-Evolutionism isn't just a quaint psychosis experienced by the fringe. It is an anti-science movement which denies, with alternative psuedo-science, anything that conflicts with a theistic view.
That's dangerous. That's delusional.
Science offers repeatable results verified in *reality*. Denying "repeatable results" because they conflict with your world view is at best akin to a child throwing a tantrum ("It's NOOOOOT true!!!). Or at worst true psychosis.
So if you want a candidate that will deny real information when it's given to them- please... vote for a creationist. That is what you will be getting.
Face it. If you get your information from press releases you deserve what you get.
Ah the sweet smell of victory!
Now bring on Microsoft!
Wait... um....
Damn... this ain't gonna be so easy.
Where's the Tylenol?
"It's classic FUD, but I don't know if MS would actually sue anyone. Unlike SCO Microsoft has a bottomless pit of money, and yet MS may not be large enough to successfully try and destroy Linux via patent infringement lawsuits."
I agree completely with you, except:
Linux datacenters (I run one), admins, and developers should be thanking their lucky stars for IBM. They and they alone have enough legal strength and money to scare Microsoft. But it gets better!
Wait and watch for the interesting times as the SCO/EVERYBODY lawsuits wind down.
Prediction: IBM sues Microsoft into the crapper once the SCO thing is resolved. At the end of the ten year lawsuit, Microsoft is irrelevant- but IBM have open sourced it's patent portfolio.
Then again... I am probably wrong and we'll be running Windows "Orbital View" and paying a penny a keystroke.
But one can hope.
For the love of god it's:
"Media Access Control"
In case any of your braniacs didn't get it:
AARP = "Apple Address Resolution Protocol"
I hope to God some of you are never allowed near Cat 5e- let alone fiber. The world would end.
God I hate to reply to my own comment.
My fellow geeks, Systems Engineers, Network Admins, and Sys Admins- Hear Ye Hear Ye:
I know what a Media Access Control address is.
Please stop defining it before my head explodes.
What I want to know is what is a "MAC address request". I've never seen one. I've seen DHCP requests, ARP requests, even AARP requests- but not a MAC address request.
I didn't know MAC addresses were assigned dynamically.
But I'm over 40- what do I know?
There's nothing anti Microsoft about this. It's a bug report and and an inferred request to confirm the bug.
Yeesh- everyone's an expert. How's that "running a file server on your firewall" thing working for ya?
Clark Connect (Or the like) is not "running Linux". Sorry.
"If this is true, I honestly don't know what to say anymore.
I'm moving to Antarctica."
This isn't anything new.
The last time we had anything like this going on was during and after the Nixon administration. In those days it was an FBI program called COINTELPRO- which infiltrated (CIA style) and collected evidence against a semi-terrorist organization called the "Weather Underground". In fact their evidence was so tainted by rights violations, that with the exception of David Gilbert, who got a life rap for murder, they all walked.
Gilbert of course was involved in an armored car robbery in New York, and charged in New York, so even he walked in regard to the COINTELPRO charges.
The others, who used to blow things up (though they warned people about the bombs so that no one would get hurt), were summarily released one after another once the federal courts got hold of the evidence of FBI wrong doing.
In fact, the evidence that freed them, was in fact STOLEN by them out of an FBI office in Mississippi (If memory serves).
This is nothing new. And under this administration not suprising. And the courts did the right thing... evidence that is "fruit of the poisoned vine" should never be allowed.
Let's hope this latest flap is far less agregious.
"How is it "logical" that IBM needs to open up their commercial products to entrench service standards? The standards should stand on their own. Open source products can embrace them regardless if commercial software remains closed."
It depends on your perspective.
On one hand, maintaining control over closed code creates a monopoly over the ability to *support* the product in question. While opensourcing the code creates competition in the support market.
So the question people should be asking relates to where you want the competition to be?
In other words, Redhat is successful because they support their product as well as or better than their competition, who also have access to the same source code as all other people who support the code. Microsoft, on the other hand, has the best support for their products, and all of the companies that support Microsoft products are reliant on Microsoft for technical information and patches. So there is limited competition in the market for support of Microsoft products, because support of Microsoft products, as a product, is controlled by Microsoft.
Just my opinion. The FOSS model is universally better.
"If this is true, and it seems pretty likely it is, it's a pretty serious matter in my opinion."
For the love of Pete!
How many times does this story have to repeat itself. The first was the supression of information out of NASA where scientific press releases/papers were altered by political appointees to better reflect the anti-evolution/anti-climate change stance of the present administration.
IF this is true?
Even a former CIA director tells a bleak tale of intelligence being skewed based on presupposition.
IF this is true?
Wake up people.
"That's the question posed. Well, we only have to look at the market penetration of Windows to know that question is rather meaningless. Ubuntu is a good distribution. "Best distribution" is a bit presumptuous as people who would be interested in a Linux distribution have different needs."
I hope this isn't taken as off topic.
It's the best distribution based on the perception of it's userbase, where hardcore IT professionals are in the minority.
Not that Ubuntu is *bad*, it's a great little desktop distro, which I may even deploy in my organization. But anyone who thinks that Ubuntu is as hardened, fast, or as stable as RHE, Debian, CentOS or a BSD variant is just fooling themselves.
Ubuntu is *easy*. That sells. It *looks good*. That sells. And it *is good*. That sells.
Ubuntu deserves it's place in the pantheon. But it is niether a workstation or server OS.
That server distribution of theirs makes me *shiver*. If one of my admins deployed Ubuntu into my datacenter I'd fire them on the spot.
"I fear that it is a real possibility however. The cost of fabs, R&D, and marketing have grown so much in the last few years that it would be VERY difficult for any newcomer to compete with Intel unless they managed to develop a completely different and low cost way to manufacture their chips... or they are very heavily backed."
AMD is not a newcomer. And the speed "crown" has passed between AMD and Intel a couple of times since the K6 and probably will again.
Maybe I'm missing something, but it appears to me that neither Intel nor AMD are ill equipped to compete, in the long term of course.
Jeesus....
22 years of system engineering experience, a thoughtful commentary, and supported opinion get you modded down?
Ack! I'll refrain from commenting further and go back to running my business.
Thanks for your comment Hucko.
Your reply illustrates marvelously the difference between what enterprise users need compared to their desktop peers.
My apologies if I appeared to be commenting in the desktop direction. Ironically, I had to defend Linux use to a board of directors today. They had been FUD'd by an article in Fortune.
Having been successful in that meeting, plans for the integration of Linux based desktops are still in the works. Although, Suse will not be considered.
Or getting Outlook to work correctly with IMAP....
I drink a lot of coffee.
Par for the course.
As a dying and irrelevant company, Novell aquires a linux distribution to save themselves, and summarily get in bed with Microsoft, who essentially would prefer to either cage or completely destroy FOSS. Within this "tasty little eggroll" is the fact that Novell seems to forget that FOSS isn't just software but a social movement.
It is a software movement pushed forward by and large by the people who actually are responsible for running large segments of the internet and computer infrastructure worldwide. Linux has been taken well past Linus Torvald's initial vision because there was a *need* for an alternative in the data center.
Novell should be worried- very worried. First, their distribution isn't all that good in my experience. Debian and Redhat basically bury it in important areas (cost, stability and Q&A- pick two). Second, they get in bed with Microsoft, a company that provides more frustration per byte than any other software company in history.
I revert to a lame Star Trek quote:
Spock: "They are dying" (in reference to the Klingons)
Kirk: "Let them die!!"
I've never used Suse, but have tested the distro, and talked with their reps. I never used them because I think their product is below par. The Microsoft deal again reinforces the decisions I made for clients who expend a great deal of money on data infrastructure and expect a minimum of frustration.
Evolution works people. Sit back and grab a coffee.
Excellent commentary...
There is something divisive about this game. I played for about a year. Within the environment of the game long standing friendships were destroyed over in-game politics.
My response to the experience was to stop playing Eve. Most of the reason I am even interested in playing MMO's is to do something with my buds. If the environment of the game screws up my friendships- I generally bail.
It's a shame. I really like Eve. I'm a sucker for space type games.
As an aside, the borgifying of player communities by game publishers also *causes* these kinds of issues. In the old days MUDs and online games (like Unreal/Quake series) didn't tie the game into a larger community controlled by the publisher. These days it's next to impossible to maintain a clan/guild/corp and an associated website since the games themselves promote a divisive community through their own portals.
Here's hoping some MMO publisher gets a clue and releases both the client and server software packages allowing independent communities to build their own worlds. This would eliminate a lot of crap.
But... there's too much margin built into that $14.00 a month.
"Novell are Desperate"...
Ya think?
Considering that if you remove distro related "religion" from the mix, Suse is a very weak distro.
Just as an aside. I may have just gotten way too deep into the Redhat camp... however....
RPM for all it's frustrations is just dandy with an apt or yum frontend. The other point is that most people running RH are running servers. We're geeks anyway, don't usually go outside of the core software set, and use Redhat because of the Q&A testing.
RPM kinda sucks for resolving dependencies, assuming you don't know what they are.
Aside from Debian, RHE3/4 is the only game going in my book. And I can't tell the president of a company that Debian is supported by a company they have heard of...
I've got 36 internet facing servers I manage. Next year it could be as high as 200. If nothing else RPM presents a known quantity which represents a certain level of security.
Or perhaps better put:
Buy, Resell, and Disenfranchise.
My sad tale....
In the 1990's there was a company called Resnova Software which made the NovaLink Professional Information Server. It was a fantastic product, where an experienced tech could fashion an AOL-like experience thus producing a mini-online service.
Well, my business was built around this technology, and having designed school networks for some time I invested a lot of time and money (Along with other people) in creating a nice safe little internet service for kiddies in school. They had a pretty user interface, access to Gopher, the k12 newsgroups, teacher assignments, class materials- all accessible from either in the school, through a standard ppp dialup account, or a local dial-in number to our NOC- same pretty GUI.
My customers loved it. So did the kids.
And along comes Microsoft. As I understand it, they wanted another technology ResNova created called "Personal Web Sharing". They made Res Nova an offer they couldn't refuse, the purchase was approved by the FTC, and Microsoft walked away with the whole company.
But what the FTC didn't consider, or didn't know enough to consider was this:
Microsoft walked away with the tech it wanted, killed the Nova Link Professional Information Server, and sold the rights to use personal web sharing to at least one other company- and that would be Apple Computer Inc.
So we lost our shirt.
http://www.businessweek.com/1997/02/b3509221.htm
It's not just customers that lose when the FTC doesn't do it's job.
Um yea... that makes sense in portions of Redmond Washington, in an opium den, and a closed session of congress.
But if you actually use their OS it makes no sense because the fox is guarding the chicken coop.
I keep sitting here hoping... in fact praying (an I'm not a religious guy)... that SOMEBODY gets a court to understand how strongly the antitrust laws could be applied to something like this. Simple Points:
1. Microsoft historically cannot secure it's own operating system.
2. Microsoft wants to charge for securing it's operating system.
3. Microsoft makes it difficult for *others* to secure it's operating system.
Yeesh...
1. Ford historically makes cars that explode.
2. Ford wants to charge extra for a car with "options" that make it not explode.
3. Ford makes it difficult for others to make Ford cars not explode.
Get the gun Gertrude, I'm gonna join with old Uncle Ben.
The above poster is right, but hasn't hit on the most critical issue:
How the hell do you get a nuclear device to re-enter the atmosphere successfully with targeting accuracy? You actually don't. You can't. Not without a re-entry system that is so advanced it's more expensive than the total paylod of the weapon itself.
Look at the re-entry systems we have (there have been two basic ones).
First, there's coating the bottom of a capsule with Corning Ware, and hoping to god the heat shield holds as a capsule hits the atmosphere at 25,000 MPH. That's the Apollo/Mercury method.
Second, there's the method of tiling the spacecraft with a material that does not absorb heat in the first place, which keeps an aluminum airframe (ok it's not much of an "airframe"- it's a flying brick [given enough thrust pigs fly- yada yada]) cool enough to survive the return. That's the Space Shuttle method.
And then there's the warhead(s) having to withstand 9 to 12 G's during re-entry. And actually getting the thing to target the right place considering the re-entry window for any particular destination is so small given the very narrow windows through which somethign can survive re-entry. You could build a massive re-entry system for let's say 9 missiles which would launch once the re-entry vehicle was in the atmosphere. But that option is expensive, and who wants fissile material bounced around at 12 G's?
So what is intended to replace earth to space launch systems? (and thus remove reentry for things and humans): The Space Elevator!
The Space Elevator is not really much of a delivery system (for warfare purposes- it has one destination).
Space based weapons? Maybe anti missle energy systems that can be just launched and left in orbit. But warhead paylods from space?
Not in our lifetime.
Heh...
Do you honestly think IBM is crushable?
Microsoft is probably the most scared of IBM (or should be) because IBM is one company they cannot crush. IBM is also just as vicious as Microsoft while litigating. Though in a relative sense IBM has better business ethics and a better corporate culture.
What we should be worried about is who ends up with all the intellectual property after IBM get's through evicerating SCO.