Heh, company firewall now has it banned. Customers' mail filtering now has it banned. Please, guys, keep going. You're making my life as an admin -so- much easier.
Why is it that such a large section of the planet seemingly churns out nothing but garbage? You would think at some point some of these ISPs (or even the governments of the countries in that region) would get the idea in their heads that if the entire region is flooding the rest of the world with shit, they may find themselves completely cut off from the rest of the world by admins who have better things to do than ban individual IPs all day every day.
I've got huge netblocks from that area completely blocked. Sure I could block 202.96.63.3, 202.96.63.5, 202.96.63.6, 202.96.51.103, 202.96.51.107 etc, but taking out 202.96.63.* and 202.96.51.* saves me 400 lines in my filter list. My country-based filters are the best tool in my multi-faceted spam filtering solution (they account for something like 70% of the blocks), and I've gotten to the point where large parts of that region are completely cut off from my customers. I use whitelists for customers who have a specific need to communicate with a specific company from the region.
I certainly hope no legitimate business owners in that region are trying to use locally hosted servers. It seems that for now, everyone over there is happy to be the New Jersey of the internet. Just sucks for the legitimate people who are going to have to seek hosting 1,000 miles away from their home country to have any shot at reaching the rest of the world.
"If we were at war, I can understand the U.S. government forming an army, a navy and and air force from the militias it calls up, and then using those military forces to win the war it has declared, within the specifications of the declaration by Congress."
Impossible, per your own post, they'd be depriving "people" of their right to life, liberty, and the persuit of happiness without due process. Ergo, the military may not kill anyone without due process.
By your logic, the United States government has no right to declare war, due to the fact that "people" will certainly be killed during the process thereof without their entitled due process.
That's quite possibly the dumbest thing I've heard in at least the past 6 months.
By your logic and the logic of those arguing your case, the British soldiers who were setting fire to Washington, DC in the War of 1812 had the full rights and priviledges of United States citizens.
By your logic, if Osama bin Laden walked into a United States military base in a foreign country with 50 pounds of TNT strapped to his chest, military police would be required to mirandize him prior to taking him into custody.
By your logic, US troops during WWII had no right to shoot any German soldier who was not an imminent threat to them, and United States police (or military police) should have been brought in to investigate the killing of every German soldier by a US soldier.
"We're talking about actively doing multiple simultaneous things in the CPU space. With MS software, you can break this easily because the framework is fragile."
Really? I have 4 monitors and am writing this within the VMware virtual machine I use for most daily tasks. Within the virtual machine, I have Google Talk, 2 Word Docs, Foxit Pro (PDF reader), and a remote desktop window open, in addition to Mozilla 1.7.x being open with 7 tabs, two of which are auto-refreshing (Gmail and cnn.com). I also have Filezilla running, which is downloading a several hundred MB gzip dump of html and php files from a web server to a network drive on the local network server. On the main machine, I have Winamp playing a playlist of mp3s, Google Earth sitting in the background with directions up on a map, Rhapsody sitting idle, Dreamweaver sitting idle, 7 remote desktop windows open to various servers, and an IE window open simultaneously displaying the video feeds from 4 Panisonic IP-based cameras we have throughout the office. In the 'real' machine, I also have 3 Mozilla windows open, with a total of about 20 tabs open to various sites. This is all running on a single-core Athlon64 3000+ with 2GB of RAM at 71% usage on Windows XP Pro SP2.
I believe I last rebooted this machine some time in May for some security patches and to fix an odd issue with Rhapsody.
Fragile... yeah.
"What I'm talking about is that a single program (and an up to date MS program at that) doing a standard function will lock you out completely. That's not a hardware issue, that's an OS architectural issue."
Which program would that be? I have not encountered a program I couldn't simply close via the task manager. Oh, wait, I have the task manager open on both the virtual machine and the main machine, so please add that to the aforementioned list. If you're having trouble with Explorer, why not simply run it in a separate process? (it's an option inside Windows, pretty easily accessible)
"I'll give you some additional specifics of the problems with Windows. Brand new Dell Latitude 820 w/ 2GB of RAM. Damn thing won't sleep/hibernate reliably. Sometimes it does, sometimes it pretends to, other times it just locks up."
Sounds like a machine hardware/BIOS problem; my Sony Vaio PCG-SRX77 hibernates and comes back to life without any problems whatsoever. It's ancient, only has 512MB of RAM, and doesn't have any trouble. Maybe your mistake was purchasing a Dell. Spend a little more and you might find the machine more reliable. Lenova Thinkpads are pretty decent; maybe try one of those instead?
"It's better than when Explorer chokes on displaying a directory with 40+ zip files in it, which happens even after viewing it the first time if its cache expired that information. Which brings up another issue: what the hell is the problem with Explorer that it can't properly show the directory tree on the left nor show new files/folders in the appropriate sort order? (Just another jibe at the single-threaded nature of Explorer and the underlying supporting libraries)"
Yer doin' it rong. I browse to the network drive with our daily backups of multiple servers from the past 6 months and I see about 300 zip files displaying just dandily. What, exactly, are you doing to your machine?
"Explorer is part of the OS and the problem exists when running within its own hardware. The issues with Explorer escalate hugely if you try to view directories/files on remote systems, even 100% homogeneous MS systems."
They do? Sounds like you have some sort of botched AD or WINS install. What's going on over there, do you need help? My misc folder on the server has about 800 files in it at this point and displays after about a 1.5 - 2 second delay. Is your network on 10 Mbit? Try going to 100Mbit. Maybe it's just congested.
"Now I'll admit I see this issues because I do more with my computers than merely read email and browse the web. But they're typical problems that are directly rela
I have a client with several hundred websites, many of which were done in the late 90s and early 00's on PHP3. Many of them break in PHP4 in some way or another unless you enable all the insecure compatibility stuff. Moving to PHP5 breaks most of them in very bad ways. The cost of updating several hundred websites, each written by different developer(s), sometimes changed by different people over a period of years, developed mostly by overseas contractors working for nothing, and most originally developed for PHP3 is absolutely insane.
Thus the client remains on (now unsupported) PHP4 with some insecure settings in place to support the broken PHP3 stuff, and has essentially no path for a feasible upgrade. All this makes me less likely to do future projects in PHP and more likely to do them in.NET, which seems (for now at least) to maintain a reasonable level of security and compatibility across multiple versions over several years. Granted PHP has gone from a broken hobbiest toy to a more professional, more secure platform since PHP3, but how much of what is written in PHP5 will be broken entirely in PHP7 a couple of years down the line? How many times do I have to go back and re-write the same thing because the methods that were so great at the time were found to be horribly insecure?
I'm not claiming any one thing is the be-all, end-all, perfect solutions; merely pointing out that PHP's track record thus far is not making me particularly comfortable with continuing to use it in any significant way. Anything I can do in PHP I can now do faster and easier in.NET unless it's something ridiculously small. Frankly, unless PHP can establish a long-term (where 'long-term' means longer than 3-4 years) framework of usable and secure methods, it's going to burn itself. In other words, unless PHP5's methods are usable and securable in 2009, it cannot remain a major force in anything other than hobbiest sites and the sites of those who just plain don't know any better. ColdFusion's death came far more swiftly than it should have due to the fact that once you moved up a couple of versions, major parts of your applications began to break. That's unheard of in HTML, C/C++, or most other things in the software world.
The idea of "get it today and it's obsolete tomorrow" is fine for hardware; not for software.
Why should you? Because those developing exclusively for Windows will help them, but will help them do their work on Windows. Laugh at Monkeyboy Ballmer all you want, but ask yourself how well that iPhone's going to do in the long run without an SDK.
Developers are the life and death of any platform. Nintendo had something like 96% of the North American gaming market and proceeded to squeeze the life out of their developers in the 1980s. Now they're just getting back into the game (pardon the pun), having been all but eliminated from the gaming world by those giving developers an alternative to banging their collective heads into walls.
The vast bulk of coders are mediocre, average coders (as with anything). If you want some percentage of the top percentage developing some percentage of their apps on Linux, that's fine, but Windows will remain supreme unless/until something better comes along (and supports the developers). The mediocre, average application developers are the ones that have to change before there can ever be a large scale shift in the mainstream platform world. If they just get slapped down every time they try, they'll go back to what they know, and they'll go back where they know they'll get the help they need.
While responses like this remain the norm, Linux will never overtake Microsoft's OSs as the dominate force behind modern computing. If you think berating those attempting to develop applications for Linux is going to help things, you're absolutely wrong. And if responses like this are all that come when someone's trying to use Linux for something and is having trouble, then there's no reason to continue trying to use Linux. Microsoft's offerings (with the exception thus far of Vista) have been getting more reliable and more powerful pretty consistently since Windows 2000. I develop applications used on both ends, and the C# ASP.NET apps run just as reliably as anything else I've ever coded, yet take 1/10th the time of doing the same work in something like PHP/MySQL.
Bottom line? If you really give a damn about Linux and want it to get the support from large companies which will propel it forward, you're going to need people on the inside of those companies using it and using it effectively. If you can't come up with a constructive comment, perhaps keeping your mouth shut is the best approach. It's not what you say; it's how you say it.
"But facts will be facts. Corruption and rigging is everywhere.... from Wolfowitz to where-you-know. Hardly any point picking on a particular leader."
Mugabe is a racist and a butcher who has no respect for self-determination, property rights, human life, or even the lives of his own people. He openly displays a racist hatred for whites while stealing their land and destroying their crops. He and those who work for him have brutally butchered those who've supported his political opposition. He's very close to ending up in The Hague, where I have no doubt he will easily be found guilty. Brutal dictators like Mugabe and Taylor should never be allowed to come to power in the first place. They're no better than any other dictator who's ever walked this Earth in luxery at the expense of his people.
Zimbabwe's annual inflation is currently at 2200% (no, that's not a typo), and their unemployment rate is over 80% (the highest unemployment rate in the entire f--king world. 25% of the country is now infected with HIV.
Anyone defending this murdering butcher is a lunatic.
I hope Bill Gates puts up $50 million for lawyers to destroy this idiot. Get this guy on the defense and run him out of every dime he has. This guy deserves a taste of his own medicine, and Bill Gates is just the man to give it to him.
Pure science has no marketable goals in mind. What will the discovery of new particles bring to the world? No one knows, just as no one knew the consequences of the discovery of the electron in 1897. Yet we now have a world where the bulk of the economy is built upon knowing its properties and behavior. Pure science brings about quiet revolutions in unpredictable ways, and those who recognize that realize that funding it is vital to progress. You mention the space program giving us Tang; have you any idea how many commercial products have come about as a direct result of the space program? Any idea of the lives saved and the progress achieved through the struggles brought about by our venturing into space?
You must not be a lawyer. This is essentially how a lawyer's brain works:
"My client did NOT kill that man! And even if she did, it was in self defense! And even if it wasn't, she wasn't capable of understanding right and wrong at the time! And even if she was, she's not competent to stand trial at this time!".
Your stance doesn't have to be consistent so long as it works at some level to get you as much as it can.
Could we please have a little more bias in the writeup? Just a little more bias and I won't even have to consider what I think about the topics anymore.
That's what I like about Slashdot; there's plenty of people around ready and willing to do your thinking for you.
You're probably right, but he's still not completely out of luck. If he can get his hands on a Windows XP disc that's the same version (ie Home/Pro, same SP number included, etc) as what was originally installed, he should be able to use the OEM key included with the machine to get Windows installed. He'll then have to call Microsoft and tell them the hard drive went bad, mainboard was replaced, etc, and he should have a fully functional standalone Windows XP installation.
Vis-a-vis the licensing, Microsoft can blow it out their ass. You purchase a license to run Windows XP when you buy the system, meaning you've paid money to Microsoft. Microsoft can throw all the legalese garbage into the EULA that they like and a court will tell them just where to stick it if they try going after someone doing what I just described above.
If I don't pay the _______________ every _____, they will take ____________ away from me. Therefore, I do not own it, the _______________ does. If I don't pay the rental place____ every month, they will take the computer away from me. Therefore, I do not own it, the rental place____ does. If I don't pay the bank___________ every month, they will take the car_____ away from me. Therefore, I do not own it, the bank___________ does. If I don't pay the mortgage lender every month, they will take the house___ away from me. Therefore, I do not own it, the mortgage lender does. If I don't pay the government_____ every year_, they will take the house___ away from me. Therefore, I do not own it, the government_____ does. If I don't pay the government_____ every year_, they will take the car_____ away from me. Therefore, I do not own it, the government_____ does.
"As an example, it is illegal for me to hit you over the head with my computer."
That has nothing to do with the computer - it has to do with causing injury to another. Your computer is irrelevent to the example. In other words, your statement above has nothing to do with a limitation on use of private property; it's a limitation on freedom and is the definition of liberty.
"It is illegal to put child porn on my computer. It is illegal to smuggle drugs in my computer."
These, again, have nothing to do with the original example. Possession of certain things is illegal. How you're storing the illegal things does not matter. Once again, it's not a limitation on your use of property, but a limitation of freedom absent any consideration of your property or its uses.
"It is illegal to sell my computer as somethign it isn't."
And again, this has nothing to do with the original example, which was that you do not own that which you will lose unless you pay to continue to possess it. You're speaking to the act of fraud, which is independent of property rights. You're in violation of the law when you attempt to defraud someone. Property rights do not come into play.
You don't seem to be understanding the difference. In the example you insisted on using time and time again - the computer - do you own that computer or rent it? If you rent it, you have to continue paying the rent on it or the owner will take it away from you. If you own it, you don't have to pay anyone to continue to possess it.
Apply the above example to a car, house, or property.
"Everything is heavily taxed left and right, that's true. But i don't think in case of a car govt. doesn't own it, what you pay for is right to use public roads so to speak."
My Federal and state income tax dollars are what build the roads. My vehicle registration and vehicle taxes are what pay for the offices, water, electricity, and employment required to run the offices in charge of vehicle registration and vehicle taxes, with enough left over to line someone's pocket higher up in the food chain.
"as long as car is registered --> there's a tax just for owning it here"
In most US states, you can't have an unregistered car, regardless of whether you drive it or whether it even functions.
If you think you own your car, try not driving it for a year and refusing to register it or pay taxes on it using that as your reason. If you think you own your home, try not paying property taxes on it.
If you had a word to describe an individual or entity which allowed you entry and use of a house in exchange for a monetary fee paid to that individual or entity, and who/which could force you to vacate the premisis on the basis of your failure to maintain payment for entry and use of that house, what would that word be?
Landlord.
Buying your own home means you have one less landlord - it does not mean you own anything.
You don't own that car, the government of Finland does. They're just allowing you to use it under specific rules and guidelines in exchange for payment. It's basically a rental car.
It's the same thing in the US, depending on where you are. Most states require inspection, some tax you just for owning the car. Every state (as far as I know) requires that you have auto insurance that's paid up to date. When you get into "owning" a house and/or property, things get much, much worse.
People seem to think it's an extremist right-wing viewpoint that the concept of personal property is being destroyed. That's ridiculous - it's as plain as the nose on your face that when it comes to personal property, you "own" nothing.
Perhaps when the governments of the world merge and start oppressing people equally around the world, the people will finally rise up and take things back. Sadly, I doubt I'll be alive to see that happen.
"People like Saddam did spread fear through their population, but he did not kill hundreds of thousands of his own people. That 'honour' belongs to the USA."
Of? Iraq's killing of hundreds of thousands of its own citizens? Well, I can't very well drop all the corpses on your desk, but would you like pictures of the bodies laying in the streets and in mass graves? Careful - seeing dead children is a little startling.
"There was no chemical weapon production plant in Iraq, no one found it. If they found it where is the evidence ?"
Ok, they had no chemical weapons production - the chemical weapons they used in Iran and in northern Iraq to kill hundreds of thousands of people magically appeared from behind Saddam's left ear during a magic trick.
"Current status of IRAQ was CIVIL WAR and this was generated by Responsible George W. Bush regime."
Iraq has had free elections and is in the process of rebuilding itself after decades of dictatorship and former colonial rule that didn't work out very well.
"How does their alleged stock ( in much the same vain as Iraq's alleged stock ) compare to the real stockpile that the US actively develops?"
It's stored and contained by a relatively responsible and sane government with no intention of using it. Iraq's stockpile of WMDs was not alleged - it was filmed and documented by United Nations weapons inspectors and it was actively used against Iran and the Kurds. North Korea's stockpile isn't alleged either - they've admitted on numerous occassions that they have weaponized Uranium and have working nuclear weapons. Furthermore, they've threatened to actually use those weapons against those they perceive as conspiring against them (ie "sea of fire...").
In your rush to condemn the United States and its government, you seem to have lost track of the fact that Iraq murdered hundreds of thousands of its own citizens and attacked its neighbors, and North Korea is threatening nearby democracies with nuclear destruction while its citizens starve en masse in an Orwellian police state. The world is not black and white as we would like, and it's time for people who delude themselves into believing it is to grow up.
These people should not be teaching our children in schools - they should be teaching them from the end of short rope in a public square what it means to call forth the tyranny of censorship.
While I can appreciate the irony of hanging those who demand this kind of censorship, I simply believe they are too dangerous to exist in a civilized and decent society. Frankly, they are a threat to the very lives of the children they claim to "teach".
"Slashdot is made up to a large extent of fairly conservative types--engineers and corporate IT folks especially--who, beyond their geekiness, are really rather unsophisticated believers in the status quo and anybody who suggests that the latest technological "advance" may not be the best thing for civilization is often modded down as "troll," whether they are actually trolling for any specific kind of reaction or not."
Actually, I've found that while Slashdot has its share of wackos from both sides of the spectrum, it generally leans slightly to the left. Part of the confusion in this posting and others regarding the makeup comes from the fact that many people have very little understanding of what the words 'liberal' or 'conservative' even mean. This applies to people on either side who describe themselves as [groupA], which seeks nothing but truth, justice, and the American way, while the other side seeks [destruction of America/status quo/murder of children/world war/etc]. This confusion stems partly from it being passed on through generations who only vote for party X because the other party only wants [see above], and also from the media and political pundits. The media will bring on whichever nutcase they can find to push a particular point, label them whatever they want to be labeled, and call it the 'news'. Political pundits (Al Franken, Rush Limbaugh, etc) will label themselves something and then start spewing stuff that almost nobody actually believes because it's so insane. Why? Ratings. How does that work? Ask Howard Stern; he's always operated the same way (half the audience loves him and wants to see what he'll say next, the other half hates him and wants to see what he'll say next).
Frankly, I've come to a point where I completely disregard what someone claims to be until I actually hear what they have to say. An ex girlfriend of mine claimed she was a 'far left liberal', Green Party voter, etc. In conversations with her, she came to realize that her views were most strongly held by conservative Republicans and conservative-leaning Democrats more than any Green Party member or liberal candidate. Where did that confusion come from? It came from the fact that every candidate wants their views to make the most sense to the largest audience, so they'll simplify their views and their opponents views down to the point where anyone who accepts what they hear at face value will be nodding their head the entire time and ready to send the 'other' guy off to a gulag. You get this kind of garbage with stuff like: "I believe America should be strong, and it should be proud, but it should also be merciful and just!" Whenever I hear completely generalized crap like that, I tune it out. Everyone believes that, but not everyone agrees on what that means or how to achieve it. That's the entire goddamn point of differing political views. I understand why politicians do it these days, but I find it insulting and I wish more the electorate did as well.
Something else to consider is that 'liberal' and 'conservative' mean different things in different parts of the world. In a generally liberal country, 'conservative' might mean 'leans left most the time' while 'liberal' might mean 'left-wing wacko extremist'. In much of the Middle East, 'conservative' means they'll look for and find a reason to chop off your head and/or throw you in prison for the next eighty years if you so much as look the wrong way. There, 'liberal' means they won't look as hard for a reason to chop off your head and/or imprison you.
Add all this to the fact that generalizing worldviews down to a one-dimensional line is impossible and you get groups of people who believe simiar things yelling back and forth at each other because they've chosen to label themselves differently. Personally, I consider myself a very conservative person, and I believe the cameras and think-crime laws passing in Britain for reasonable measures these days are ridiculously anti-freedom. They finally got rid of the monarchy's po
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Heh, company firewall now has it banned. Customers' mail filtering now has it banned. Please, guys, keep going. You're making my life as an admin -so- much easier.
Why is it that such a large section of the planet seemingly churns out nothing but garbage? You would think at some point some of these ISPs (or even the governments of the countries in that region) would get the idea in their heads that if the entire region is flooding the rest of the world with shit, they may find themselves completely cut off from the rest of the world by admins who have better things to do than ban individual IPs all day every day.
I've got huge netblocks from that area completely blocked. Sure I could block 202.96.63.3, 202.96.63.5, 202.96.63.6, 202.96.51.103, 202.96.51.107 etc, but taking out 202.96.63.* and 202.96.51.* saves me 400 lines in my filter list. My country-based filters are the best tool in my multi-faceted spam filtering solution (they account for something like 70% of the blocks), and I've gotten to the point where large parts of that region are completely cut off from my customers. I use whitelists for customers who have a specific need to communicate with a specific company from the region.
I certainly hope no legitimate business owners in that region are trying to use locally hosted servers. It seems that for now, everyone over there is happy to be the New Jersey of the internet. Just sucks for the legitimate people who are going to have to seek hosting 1,000 miles away from their home country to have any shot at reaching the rest of the world.
"If we were at war, I can understand the U.S. government forming an army, a navy and and air force from the militias it calls up, and then using those military forces to win the war it has declared, within the specifications of the declaration by Congress."
Impossible, per your own post, they'd be depriving "people" of their right to life, liberty, and the persuit of happiness without due process. Ergo, the military may not kill anyone without due process.
In other words, your opinion is wrong.
By your logic, the United States government has no right to declare war, due to the fact that "people" will certainly be killed during the process thereof without their entitled due process.
That's quite possibly the dumbest thing I've heard in at least the past 6 months.
By your logic and the logic of those arguing your case, the British soldiers who were setting fire to Washington, DC in the War of 1812 had the full rights and priviledges of United States citizens.
By your logic, if Osama bin Laden walked into a United States military base in a foreign country with 50 pounds of TNT strapped to his chest, military police would be required to mirandize him prior to taking him into custody.
By your logic, US troops during WWII had no right to shoot any German soldier who was not an imminent threat to them, and United States police (or military police) should have been brought in to investigate the killing of every German soldier by a US soldier.
If that makes any sense, I'm insane.
"We're talking about actively doing multiple simultaneous things in the CPU space. With MS software, you can break this easily because the framework is fragile."
Really? I have 4 monitors and am writing this within the VMware virtual machine I use for most daily tasks. Within the virtual machine, I have Google Talk, 2 Word Docs, Foxit Pro (PDF reader), and a remote desktop window open, in addition to Mozilla 1.7.x being open with 7 tabs, two of which are auto-refreshing (Gmail and cnn.com). I also have Filezilla running, which is downloading a several hundred MB gzip dump of html and php files from a web server to a network drive on the local network server. On the main machine, I have Winamp playing a playlist of mp3s, Google Earth sitting in the background with directions up on a map, Rhapsody sitting idle, Dreamweaver sitting idle, 7 remote desktop windows open to various servers, and an IE window open simultaneously displaying the video feeds from 4 Panisonic IP-based cameras we have throughout the office. In the 'real' machine, I also have 3 Mozilla windows open, with a total of about 20 tabs open to various sites. This is all running on a single-core Athlon64 3000+ with 2GB of RAM at 71% usage on Windows XP Pro SP2.
I believe I last rebooted this machine some time in May for some security patches and to fix an odd issue with Rhapsody.
Fragile... yeah.
"What I'm talking about is that a single program (and an up to date MS program at that) doing a standard function will lock you out completely. That's not a hardware issue, that's an OS architectural issue."
Which program would that be? I have not encountered a program I couldn't simply close via the task manager. Oh, wait, I have the task manager open on both the virtual machine and the main machine, so please add that to the aforementioned list. If you're having trouble with Explorer, why not simply run it in a separate process? (it's an option inside Windows, pretty easily accessible)
"I'll give you some additional specifics of the problems with Windows. Brand new Dell Latitude 820 w/ 2GB of RAM. Damn thing won't sleep/hibernate reliably. Sometimes it does, sometimes it pretends to, other times it just locks up."
Sounds like a machine hardware/BIOS problem; my Sony Vaio PCG-SRX77 hibernates and comes back to life without any problems whatsoever. It's ancient, only has 512MB of RAM, and doesn't have any trouble. Maybe your mistake was purchasing a Dell. Spend a little more and you might find the machine more reliable. Lenova Thinkpads are pretty decent; maybe try one of those instead?
"It's better than when Explorer chokes on displaying a directory with 40+ zip files in it, which happens even after viewing it the first time if its cache expired that information. Which brings up another issue: what the hell is the problem with Explorer that it can't properly show the directory tree on the left nor show new files/folders in the appropriate sort order? (Just another jibe at the single-threaded nature of Explorer and the underlying supporting libraries)"
Yer doin' it rong. I browse to the network drive with our daily backups of multiple servers from the past 6 months and I see about 300 zip files displaying just dandily. What, exactly, are you doing to your machine?
"Explorer is part of the OS and the problem exists when running within its own hardware. The issues with Explorer escalate hugely if you try to view directories/files on remote systems, even 100% homogeneous MS systems."
They do? Sounds like you have some sort of botched AD or WINS install. What's going on over there, do you need help? My misc folder on the server has about 800 files in it at this point and displays after about a 1.5 - 2 second delay. Is your network on 10 Mbit? Try going to 100Mbit. Maybe it's just congested.
"Now I'll admit I see this issues because I do more with my computers than merely read email and browse the web. But they're typical problems that are directly rela
That's great; so in 1998, you were writing code that worked on versions of PHP that were two generations beyond what was publicly available?
It's easy to write code that works under PHP5 now. Write code that you will guarantee will work under PHP7 in 2010 without significant modification.
I have a client with several hundred websites, many of which were done in the late 90s and early 00's on PHP3. Many of them break in PHP4 in some way or another unless you enable all the insecure compatibility stuff. Moving to PHP5 breaks most of them in very bad ways. The cost of updating several hundred websites, each written by different developer(s), sometimes changed by different people over a period of years, developed mostly by overseas contractors working for nothing, and most originally developed for PHP3 is absolutely insane.
.NET, which seems (for now at least) to maintain a reasonable level of security and compatibility across multiple versions over several years. Granted PHP has gone from a broken hobbiest toy to a more professional, more secure platform since PHP3, but how much of what is written in PHP5 will be broken entirely in PHP7 a couple of years down the line? How many times do I have to go back and re-write the same thing because the methods that were so great at the time were found to be horribly insecure?
.NET unless it's something ridiculously small. Frankly, unless PHP can establish a long-term (where 'long-term' means longer than 3-4 years) framework of usable and secure methods, it's going to burn itself. In other words, unless PHP5's methods are usable and securable in 2009, it cannot remain a major force in anything other than hobbiest sites and the sites of those who just plain don't know any better. ColdFusion's death came far more swiftly than it should have due to the fact that once you moved up a couple of versions, major parts of your applications began to break. That's unheard of in HTML, C/C++, or most other things in the software world.
Thus the client remains on (now unsupported) PHP4 with some insecure settings in place to support the broken PHP3 stuff, and has essentially no path for a feasible upgrade. All this makes me less likely to do future projects in PHP and more likely to do them in
I'm not claiming any one thing is the be-all, end-all, perfect solutions; merely pointing out that PHP's track record thus far is not making me particularly comfortable with continuing to use it in any significant way. Anything I can do in PHP I can now do faster and easier in
The idea of "get it today and it's obsolete tomorrow" is fine for hardware; not for software.
Why should you? Because those developing exclusively for Windows will help them, but will help them do their work on Windows. Laugh at Monkeyboy Ballmer all you want, but ask yourself how well that iPhone's going to do in the long run without an SDK.
Developers are the life and death of any platform. Nintendo had something like 96% of the North American gaming market and proceeded to squeeze the life out of their developers in the 1980s. Now they're just getting back into the game (pardon the pun), having been all but eliminated from the gaming world by those giving developers an alternative to banging their collective heads into walls.
The vast bulk of coders are mediocre, average coders (as with anything). If you want some percentage of the top percentage developing some percentage of their apps on Linux, that's fine, but Windows will remain supreme unless/until something better comes along (and supports the developers). The mediocre, average application developers are the ones that have to change before there can ever be a large scale shift in the mainstream platform world. If they just get slapped down every time they try, they'll go back to what they know, and they'll go back where they know they'll get the help they need.
While responses like this remain the norm, Linux will never overtake Microsoft's OSs as the dominate force behind modern computing. If you think berating those attempting to develop applications for Linux is going to help things, you're absolutely wrong. And if responses like this are all that come when someone's trying to use Linux for something and is having trouble, then there's no reason to continue trying to use Linux. Microsoft's offerings (with the exception thus far of Vista) have been getting more reliable and more powerful pretty consistently since Windows 2000. I develop applications used on both ends, and the C# ASP.NET apps run just as reliably as anything else I've ever coded, yet take 1/10th the time of doing the same work in something like PHP/MySQL.
Bottom line? If you really give a damn about Linux and want it to get the support from large companies which will propel it forward, you're going to need people on the inside of those companies using it and using it effectively. If you can't come up with a constructive comment, perhaps keeping your mouth shut is the best approach. It's not what you say; it's how you say it.
"making friends online if you ever plan to meet them in real life. Its extreme negativity is disappointing"
I met my soon-to-be-wife on a text-based RPG. Only thing dangerous about that is the prospect of my genes being passed on to future generations.
These people are assholes.
"But facts will be facts. Corruption and rigging is everywhere.... from Wolfowitz to where-you-know. Hardly any point picking on a particular leader."
Mugabe is a racist and a butcher who has no respect for self-determination, property rights, human life, or even the lives of his own people. He openly displays a racist hatred for whites while stealing their land and destroying their crops. He and those who work for him have brutally butchered those who've supported his political opposition. He's very close to ending up in The Hague, where I have no doubt he will easily be found guilty. Brutal dictators like Mugabe and Taylor should never be allowed to come to power in the first place. They're no better than any other dictator who's ever walked this Earth in luxery at the expense of his people.
Zimbabwe's annual inflation is currently at 2200% (no, that's not a typo), and their unemployment rate is over 80% (the highest unemployment rate in the entire f--king world. 25% of the country is now infected with HIV.
Anyone defending this murdering butcher is a lunatic.
I hope Bill Gates puts up $50 million for lawyers to destroy this idiot. Get this guy on the defense and run him out of every dime he has. This guy deserves a taste of his own medicine, and Bill Gates is just the man to give it to him.
Pure science has no marketable goals in mind. What will the discovery of new particles bring to the world? No one knows, just as no one knew the consequences of the discovery of the electron in 1897. Yet we now have a world where the bulk of the economy is built upon knowing its properties and behavior. Pure science brings about quiet revolutions in unpredictable ways, and those who recognize that realize that funding it is vital to progress. You mention the space program giving us Tang; have you any idea how many commercial products have come about as a direct result of the space program? Any idea of the lives saved and the progress achieved through the struggles brought about by our venturing into space?
You must not be a lawyer. This is essentially how a lawyer's brain works:
"My client did NOT kill that man! And even if she did, it was in self defense! And even if it wasn't, she wasn't capable of understanding right and wrong at the time! And even if she was, she's not competent to stand trial at this time!".
Your stance doesn't have to be consistent so long as it works at some level to get you as much as it can.
Could we please have a little more bias in the writeup? Just a little more bias and I won't even have to consider what I think about the topics anymore.
That's what I like about Slashdot; there's plenty of people around ready and willing to do your thinking for you.
You're probably right, but he's still not completely out of luck. If he can get his hands on a Windows XP disc that's the same version (ie Home/Pro, same SP number included, etc) as what was originally installed, he should be able to use the OEM key included with the machine to get Windows installed. He'll then have to call Microsoft and tell them the hard drive went bad, mainboard was replaced, etc, and he should have a fully functional standalone Windows XP installation.
Vis-a-vis the licensing, Microsoft can blow it out their ass. You purchase a license to run Windows XP when you buy the system, meaning you've paid money to Microsoft. Microsoft can throw all the legalese garbage into the EULA that they like and a court will tell them just where to stick it if they try going after someone doing what I just described above.
In other words:
If I don't pay the _______________ every _____, they will take ____________ away from me. Therefore, I do not own it, the _______________ does.
If I don't pay the rental place____ every month, they will take the computer away from me. Therefore, I do not own it, the rental place____ does.
If I don't pay the bank___________ every month, they will take the car_____ away from me. Therefore, I do not own it, the bank___________ does.
If I don't pay the mortgage lender every month, they will take the house___ away from me. Therefore, I do not own it, the mortgage lender does.
If I don't pay the government_____ every year_, they will take the house___ away from me. Therefore, I do not own it, the government_____ does.
If I don't pay the government_____ every year_, they will take the car_____ away from me. Therefore, I do not own it, the government_____ does.
"As an example, it is illegal for me to hit you over the head with my computer."
That has nothing to do with the computer - it has to do with causing injury to another. Your computer is irrelevent to the example. In other words, your statement above has nothing to do with a limitation on use of private property; it's a limitation on freedom and is the definition of liberty.
"It is illegal to put child porn on my computer. It is illegal to smuggle drugs in my computer."
These, again, have nothing to do with the original example. Possession of certain things is illegal. How you're storing the illegal things does not matter. Once again, it's not a limitation on your use of property, but a limitation of freedom absent any consideration of your property or its uses.
"It is illegal to sell my computer as somethign it isn't."
And again, this has nothing to do with the original example, which was that you do not own that which you will lose unless you pay to continue to possess it. You're speaking to the act of fraud, which is independent of property rights. You're in violation of the law when you attempt to defraud someone. Property rights do not come into play.
You don't seem to be understanding the difference. In the example you insisted on using time and time again - the computer - do you own that computer or rent it? If you rent it, you have to continue paying the rent on it or the owner will take it away from you. If you own it, you don't have to pay anyone to continue to possess it.
Apply the above example to a car, house, or property.
"Everything is heavily taxed left and right, that's true. But i don't think in case of a car govt. doesn't own it, what you pay
for is right to use public roads so to speak."
My Federal and state income tax dollars are what build the roads. My vehicle registration and vehicle taxes are what pay for the offices, water, electricity, and employment required to run the offices in charge of vehicle registration and vehicle taxes, with enough left over to line someone's pocket higher up in the food chain.
"as long as car is registered --> there's a tax just for owning it here"
In most US states, you can't have an unregistered car, regardless of whether you drive it or whether it even functions.
If you think you own your car, try not driving it for a year and refusing to register it or pay taxes on it using that as your reason. If you think you own your home, try not paying property taxes on it.
If you had a word to describe an individual or entity which allowed you entry and use of a house in exchange for a monetary fee paid to that individual or entity, and who/which could force you to vacate the premisis on the basis of your failure to maintain payment for entry and use of that house, what would that word be?
Landlord.
Buying your own home means you have one less landlord - it does not mean you own anything.
"Currently, if you own a car"
You don't own that car, the government of Finland does. They're just allowing you to use it under specific rules and guidelines in exchange for payment. It's basically a rental car.
It's the same thing in the US, depending on where you are. Most states require inspection, some tax you just for owning the car. Every state (as far as I know) requires that you have auto insurance that's paid up to date. When you get into "owning" a house and/or property, things get much, much worse.
People seem to think it's an extremist right-wing viewpoint that the concept of personal property is being destroyed. That's ridiculous - it's as plain as the nose on your face that when it comes to personal property, you "own" nothing.
Perhaps when the governments of the world merge and start oppressing people equally around the world, the people will finally rise up and take things back. Sadly, I doubt I'll be alive to see that happen.
"People like Saddam did spread fear through their population, but he did not kill hundreds of thousands of his own people. That 'honour' belongs to the USA."
The Kurds would tend to disagree.
"Where is that f*cking evidence..."
Of? Iraq's killing of hundreds of thousands of its own citizens? Well, I can't very well drop all the corpses on your desk, but would you like pictures of the bodies laying in the streets and in mass graves? Careful - seeing dead children is a little startling.
"There was no chemical weapon production plant in Iraq, no one found it. If they found it where is the evidence ?"
Ok, they had no chemical weapons production - the chemical weapons they used in Iran and in northern Iraq to kill hundreds of thousands of people magically appeared from behind Saddam's left ear during a magic trick.
"Current status of IRAQ was CIVIL WAR and this was generated by Responsible George W. Bush regime."
Iraq has had free elections and is in the process of rebuilding itself after decades of dictatorship and former colonial rule that didn't work out very well.
"How does their alleged stock ( in much the same vain as Iraq's alleged stock ) compare to the real stockpile that the US actively develops?"
It's stored and contained by a relatively responsible and sane government with no intention of using it. Iraq's stockpile of WMDs was not alleged - it was filmed and documented by United Nations weapons inspectors and it was actively used against Iran and the Kurds. North Korea's stockpile isn't alleged either - they've admitted on numerous occassions that they have weaponized Uranium and have working nuclear weapons. Furthermore, they've threatened to actually use those weapons against those they perceive as conspiring against them (ie "sea of fire...").
In your rush to condemn the United States and its government, you seem to have lost track of the fact that Iraq murdered hundreds of thousands of its own citizens and attacked its neighbors, and North Korea is threatening nearby democracies with nuclear destruction while its citizens starve en masse in an Orwellian police state. The world is not black and white as we would like, and it's time for people who delude themselves into believing it is to grow up.
These people should not be teaching our children in schools - they should be teaching them from the end of short rope in a public square what it means to call forth the tyranny of censorship.
While I can appreciate the irony of hanging those who demand this kind of censorship, I simply believe they are too dangerous to exist in a civilized and decent society. Frankly, they are a threat to the very lives of the children they claim to "teach".
"Slashdot is made up to a large extent of fairly conservative types--engineers and corporate IT folks especially--who, beyond their geekiness, are really rather unsophisticated believers in the status quo and anybody who suggests that the latest technological "advance" may not be the best thing for civilization is often modded down as "troll," whether they are actually trolling for any specific kind of reaction or not."
Actually, I've found that while Slashdot has its share of wackos from both sides of the spectrum, it generally leans slightly to the left. Part of the confusion in this posting and others regarding the makeup comes from the fact that many people have very little understanding of what the words 'liberal' or 'conservative' even mean. This applies to people on either side who describe themselves as [groupA], which seeks nothing but truth, justice, and the American way, while the other side seeks [destruction of America/status quo/murder of children/world war/etc]. This confusion stems partly from it being passed on through generations who only vote for party X because the other party only wants [see above], and also from the media and political pundits. The media will bring on whichever nutcase they can find to push a particular point, label them whatever they want to be labeled, and call it the 'news'. Political pundits (Al Franken, Rush Limbaugh, etc) will label themselves something and then start spewing stuff that almost nobody actually believes because it's so insane. Why? Ratings. How does that work? Ask Howard Stern; he's always operated the same way (half the audience loves him and wants to see what he'll say next, the other half hates him and wants to see what he'll say next).
Frankly, I've come to a point where I completely disregard what someone claims to be until I actually hear what they have to say. An ex girlfriend of mine claimed she was a 'far left liberal', Green Party voter, etc. In conversations with her, she came to realize that her views were most strongly held by conservative Republicans and conservative-leaning Democrats more than any Green Party member or liberal candidate. Where did that confusion come from? It came from the fact that every candidate wants their views to make the most sense to the largest audience, so they'll simplify their views and their opponents views down to the point where anyone who accepts what they hear at face value will be nodding their head the entire time and ready to send the 'other' guy off to a gulag. You get this kind of garbage with stuff like: "I believe America should be strong, and it should be proud, but it should also be merciful and just!" Whenever I hear completely generalized crap like that, I tune it out. Everyone believes that, but not everyone agrees on what that means or how to achieve it. That's the entire goddamn point of differing political views. I understand why politicians do it these days, but I find it insulting and I wish more the electorate did as well.
Something else to consider is that 'liberal' and 'conservative' mean different things in different parts of the world. In a generally liberal country, 'conservative' might mean 'leans left most the time' while 'liberal' might mean 'left-wing wacko extremist'. In much of the Middle East, 'conservative' means they'll look for and find a reason to chop off your head and/or throw you in prison for the next eighty years if you so much as look the wrong way. There, 'liberal' means they won't look as hard for a reason to chop off your head and/or imprison you.
Add all this to the fact that generalizing worldviews down to a one-dimensional line is impossible and you get groups of people who believe simiar things yelling back and forth at each other because they've chosen to label themselves differently. Personally, I consider myself a very conservative person, and I believe the cameras and think-crime laws passing in Britain for reasonable measures these days are ridiculously anti-freedom. They finally got rid of the monarchy's po