Exactly my point. Netware(3.12) was a solid system. No version of NT is a solid system.
The one I found (abandoned Netware 3.12 server) was so long forgotten that the current IT staff didn't even know it existed. The monitor screen showed over three years of uptime. The only blip it had seen was a power outage (the UPS batteries had long since died) from which the server recovered flawlessly.
Atlantic Fleet Technical Support Center in Norfolk.
Thank you for calling. Your call is very important to us...
Atlantic Fleet Technical Support Center, can I get your name?
This is Captain Johnson of the U.S.S. Excelsior, we are under attack and...
Alright, Mr. Johnson, is there a number where we can reach you should we be disconnected.
Um, (muffled) what is this extension? (BOOM!) Another hit, sir, port quarter aft. Heavy flooding.
We're taking damage - look, is there any way we can expedite this, the whole ship has crashed. We're dead in the water and...
Thank you, Mr. Johnson, that will be fine. Can you give me your product serial number?
Um, CGN 2000. Look, I...
That's not a valid serial number. If you could click help-about...
We have blue screens on all our terminals. Is there any way we can escalate this call? (muffled) Put that fire out, I'm on the phone!
Ooo....kay. Uh, do you have your certificate of authenticity?
---time passes---
I'm sorry, Mr, Johnson, I'll have to forward your call to our product activation center. The new ammunition you loaded on the 14th requires you to re-register.
So I guess my plan to set up the official Amish web site (It was going to be a picture of a barn raising faded to white with "under construction" in a nice cursive font) might not have been as funny as I thought.
P.S. - don't try - somebody else got to the domain name before I could.
Are you actually attempting to make the point that there is no appreciable differnce in the integrity, quality, and inherent security between any two given platforms?
History has proven that the advancement of a civilization is directly related to the free exchange of information. The free and open environment of the 1980's allowed a thriving technical community to develop within the United States. Because the innovations this community threatened existing, entrenched business models on the part of megacorps dependent on the scarcity of information among the general public, the United States enacted a devastating, punitive, and horrifying blow to the free exchange of information within that country.
In the United States, we are now beholden to large corporations as to what we can say. The DMCA has been used in dozens of SLAPP lawsuits, and has even been used by religious groups to silence their detractors. Technical and scientific conferences are now taking place overseas because scientists are afraid of setting foot in this country. We are in a fearful death spiral, where ideas are exchanged only in dark corners, and where the community whose accomplishments made information valuable are now criminals.
I say, with all possible fervor and desperation, for the sake of the free world, do not follow us into this wasteland of corporately enforced silence. Even now, public awareness of the impact of the DMCA is growing. My representative is currently cosposoring a bill to check the awesome and terrifying power of the DMCA. Just as we repealed the restrictive laws against the use of alcohol by gradual changes in public attitudes, we will eventually put the sad chapter of the DMCA behind us. For the sake of your freedom and your people, have the courage to hold out until we can change things here. We would find it unconscionable if this terrible mistake of legislation turned into a worldwide cancer threatening the idea of free speech.
Capatalism requires us all to give up freedoms in the form of agreeing to be ruled by a government so that certain rules (that restrict freedom) can be enforced so that capatalism can work.
Well, Capitalism, as it is practiced in the U.S., goes a lot farther than bondage under the law.
Capitalism means you are not free to carry a gun in your car, because your company doesn't allow it. Capitalism means you can't listen to what you want to listen to (see Janis Ian on controlling the supply side of the artist-consumer equation). It means your insurance won't pay for certain medications because the patent has not yet expired. It means you can't skip through the ads on your kids' DVDs, and you can't legally burn copies of your own CDs. It's why Office Space is funny, why your job sucks, and why you've always known that something is wrong with the world; like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.
It's why Ken Lay is still living the high life. Capitalism is the hand who makes Bush's mouth move and the force that saw the DMCA pass almost unanimously.
The United States (as originally designed) != capitalism.
Captilism is a new, post-industrial idea. The thinking is that things are run by the few who have scrambled to the top and can negotiate with each other for power and influence (see Rockefeller on this, who actually disdained the idea of a free market). I therefore don't subscribe to the idea that a government must be either Captilist or Communist. Call me a throwback, but I am kind of partial to the word free.
You are OK with licensing terms that allow you to risk needing to reinstall only 3 times per 120 days (how do you install sound card drivers?)
The three "changes" are hardware, not software. In other words, a new hard drive, a new sound card, and a new burner would be fine, but one more in less than 120 days would require activation.
OK, so the answer is yes. How expanding "changes" to events less significant than a reinstall supports your point is, I suppose, something I'll have to chalk up to "what universe am I in" question I asked earlier, and certainly doesn't help me determine WTF.
By the way, you never responded to my first point, that this sounds more like a different computer than an upgrade.
Well, the short answer is, I don't care. I don't agree with your assessment (some of us buy computers with the intent to move an already licensed operating system to them), but I don't think it's relevant to this discussion.
I don't play in the XP land (never will), so I'm not as up on the terms and conditions. But I just have to ask...
W...T...F?
Second, XP allows three changes every 120 days.
They put a limit on how often you can reinstall? 3 every 120 days? Huh? I'm supposed to plan my upgrade activity around this arbitrary number decided from On High at Redmond? 3 per 120 days is consistent with neither the average runtime for a given install before complete entropic failure or for the average number of system destroying Microsoft virii per unit time. Where did they come up with that number? Do you windows users actually have conversations like, "Uh, yeah, boss, my system got fried by that slammer bug yesterday, and I can't reinstall until February."
No sympathy from me.
You know, I may just see things fundamentally differently than you. When I see something this - a statement so mind numbingly incongruent with any furtherance of any thought I might consider slightly rational, it occurs to me that I might be facing a cultural or mental barrier whose sheer profundity demands a complete reasessment of the known universe. Pursuant to that goal:
You are OK with licensing terms that allow you to risk needing to reinstall only 3 times per 120 days (how do you install sound card drivers?)
You are aware that the licensing terms preclude your ability to control how and when your system is patched, ignoring all technical concerns with regard to the effect of that patch on your system, or the every changing EULA upon your way of life.
When you know of someone whose ability to use their computer impinged by these ridiculous licensing terms, you actually have the gall to tell them you have no sympathy?
If we're on the same page thus far, then I have obviously waited far too long to leave the country.
Okay, so ordinary people develop a community and set of ad hoc standards which accurately inform everyone and serves as an adequate conveyance of trust. In so doing, we create the online mechanism of ensuring fairness and justice.
The disc is professionally recorded and pressed, and even includes a very well designed and nice looking insert. The quality of both is indistinguishable from RIAA material. I don't know what exactly they paid to have this done, but I know they couldn't have afforded anything in the 5 figure range.
Uh, well, no, actually, I'm not. We could trade unsubstantiated personal anecdotes until we're blue in the face, but from my experience working on PCs to my systems integration work to my involvement on several large implementation projects to my experience as an MIS manager at a large law firm, I've been personally responsible for the operation of untold tens of thousands of computers running Windows (3x-2000). My statements of Windows' legendary instability derive directly from that experience. It's one thing to shoot your mouth off on slashdot about a technology or operating system; quite another to develop a workstation image plan to mitigate the staggering instability of said technology and have your job depend on how appropriately designed and well executed that plan is.
In short, I've been in the position of putting my money where my mouth is with regard to Windows, and my professional advice has served both myself and my customers well - backup often, and know where your reinstall discs are!
Or did you think that the BSOD is a cultural meme because of widespread socioeconomic envy toward Bill Gates?
In NT/2000/XP you can invariably kill the process and keep going.
Factually incorrect, sir. Based on my experience, you have about a 30% better chance of getting your computer back if you run 2000 vs. 9x. Hardly invariable.
There is also the little problem of progressive entropy. Anyone who runs windows regularly (including 2000) knows that every six or so months, the thing is just going to go loopy, and the only solution is to format the hard drive and reinstall. This is unheard of with Linux. I've used Linux since 1998, and I've seen two X crashes in that time. In both cases, the crash didn't lock the operating system. The only kernel panic I've heard of was related to the horrible death of a RAID controller, but I wasn't there, so I can't personally verify that kernel panics actually happen:).
So, should we do a breakdown on the amount of biomass is consumed by a pregnant human mother in the production of an infant? I'm sure a prodigious amount of animal and plant death is involved in the process (one can hear the cucumbers crying out as they're boiled in vinegar).
Are we supposed to feel guilty because of how expensive we or our tools are in terms of environmental impact? The last time I checked, WE evolved here, which makes us part of that environment. We are the product of that process. Furthermore, the really noble things we do revolve around the free exchange of information, which makes the expenditure of energy and resources supporting that endeavor noble as well.
Do you think an environmental impact study was done before the Mona Lisa was painted?
Thanks for the heads up regarding the differences in traffic analyzability between gnutella and freenet
Not gnutella - GNUnet. Gnutella is not anonymous in any way.
I do not believe they will feel that the evader was the user.
You may have something there.
They don't get prosecuted, because they have not done anything wrong.
Well, yes and no. If they can prove intent, posession of stolen property is a felony in most US jurisdictions. In actual practice, however, the only people who go to jail over this are those who have committed POP (pissing off the police), and were convicted on every conceivable charge because they tried to run over a cop or some such. In most cases, it's used as leverage to get people to identify and testify against the thief.
To prove that their machine had it, the "expert" would need verifiable copies of that data plus the encryption keys to access it
Well, there are two problems with what you suggest. The first is technical. Freenet is quite susceptible to traffic analysis. If law enforcement controls a sufficient number of nodes in sufficient proximity to your node, they can identify what data resides on it.
The second problem has to do with what passes for proof in American courts these days, particularly with regard to computer related crimes. According to your (accurate) definition of proof, the proof must be positive and clear. In the actual practice of criminal law, this is not the case. For example, you would think that in order to prove posession of child pornography, the subject in a given photograph must be identified and the date of the photo must be established in order to prove that the material is, in fact a picture of a child. Not so. The cops have a medical examiner look at the photo. All it takes at this point to put you in prison is a statement of "pre-pubescent breast morphology - apparent age - 14". If this standard of proof is all it takes to convince almost any jury that you belong behind bars (and it is), techno-babble about how you can't prove that is on the node will fall on very deaf ears. Even if a jury is somehow made to understand how freenet works, they will interpret it as deliberately evasive (and they'd be right), and will find guilt based on that fact. Indeed, there is legal precedent for the prosecution of those anonymously or indirectly involved in a crime - posession of stolen property.
In short, I think that if freenet is tested legally, it will be interpreted along the lines of a spoonfull of sewage in a barell full of wine. However fine the wine, it all becomes sewage after the addition of the former. Therefore, just using freenet is likely to land you in prison.
I'm not saying I like this state of affairs, but I have some experience in these matters, and I'm calling it as I see it. Since deniability cannot stand up as a legal defense, you must be in a position, as a p2p user, of being aware and in control of what is on your system. This is why I am rather optimistic about the way gnunet is put together. It is more resistant to traffic analysis than freenet, and storing data for the anonymous collective is optional rather than required. In this way, you at least are in control of what laws you are breaking.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly my point. Netware(3.12) was a solid system. No version of NT is a solid system.
The one I found (abandoned Netware 3.12 server) was so long forgotten that the current IT staff didn't even know it existed. The monitor screen showed over three years of uptime. The only blip it had seen was a power outage (the UPS batteries had long since died) from which the server recovered flawlessly.
Yet another example of how any weapon sounds cooler in German.
I don't know. I think my wireless security would be considerably better served by a Mk34 gun on the roof than by using WEP.
Atlantic Fleet Technical Support Center in Norfolk.
Thank you for calling. Your call is very important to us...
Atlantic Fleet Technical Support Center, can I get your name?
This is Captain Johnson of the U.S.S. Excelsior, we are under attack and...
Alright, Mr. Johnson, is there a number where we can reach you should we be disconnected.
Um, (muffled) what is this extension? (BOOM!) Another hit, sir, port quarter aft. Heavy flooding.
We're taking damage - look, is there any way we can expedite this, the whole ship has crashed. We're dead in the water and...
Thank you, Mr. Johnson, that will be fine. Can you give me your product serial number?
Um, CGN 2000. Look, I...
That's not a valid serial number. If you could click help-about...
We have blue screens on all our terminals. Is there any way we can escalate this call? (muffled) Put that fire out, I'm on the phone!
Ooo....kay. Uh, do you have your certificate of authenticity?
---time passes---
I'm sorry, Mr, Johnson, I'll have to forward your call to our product activation center. The new ammunition you loaded on the 14th requires you to re-register.
Well, let me ask you, have you ever heard of an old NT 3.51 box accidentally sealed in to an abandoned closet and running for years afterward?
Neither have I.
So I guess my plan to set up the official Amish web site (It was going to be a picture of a barn raising faded to white with "under construction" in a nice cursive font) might not have been as funny as I thought.
P.S. - don't try - somebody else got to the domain name before I could.
It's akin to having a reinforced steel front door with the side window open.
yeah, but some systems are more like houses of cards rather than a solidly built room with a door that needs to be locked.
Are you actually attempting to make the point that there is no appreciable differnce in the integrity, quality, and inherent security between any two given platforms?
I have come to dread every MS patch with a certain sense of dread.
I smell the smelly smell of something that smells smelly.
Relying on a vendors automatic update feature is no substitute for solid system administration.
Solid system administration is no substitute for solid systems.
History has proven that the advancement of a civilization is directly related to the free exchange of information. The free and open environment of the 1980's allowed a thriving technical community to develop within the United States. Because the innovations this community threatened existing, entrenched business models on the part of megacorps dependent on the scarcity of information among the general public, the United States enacted a devastating, punitive, and horrifying blow to the free exchange of information within that country.
In the United States, we are now beholden to large corporations as to what we can say. The DMCA has been used in dozens of SLAPP lawsuits, and has even been used by religious groups to silence their detractors. Technical and scientific conferences are now taking place overseas because scientists are afraid of setting foot in this country. We are in a fearful death spiral, where ideas are exchanged only in dark corners, and where the community whose accomplishments made information valuable are now criminals.
I say, with all possible fervor and desperation, for the sake of the free world, do not follow us into this wasteland of corporately enforced silence. Even now, public awareness of the impact of the DMCA is growing. My representative is currently cosposoring a bill to check the awesome and terrifying power of the DMCA. Just as we repealed the restrictive laws against the use of alcohol by gradual changes in public attitudes, we will eventually put the sad chapter of the DMCA behind us. For the sake of your freedom and your people, have the courage to hold out until we can change things here. We would find it unconscionable if this terrible mistake of legislation turned into a worldwide cancer threatening the idea of free speech.
Capatalism requires us all to give up freedoms in the form of agreeing to be ruled by a government so that certain rules (that restrict freedom) can be enforced so that capatalism can work.
Well, Capitalism, as it is practiced in the U.S., goes a lot farther than bondage under the law.
Capitalism means you are not free to carry a gun in your car, because your company doesn't allow it. Capitalism means you can't listen to what you want to listen to (see Janis Ian on controlling the supply side of the artist-consumer equation). It means your insurance won't pay for certain medications because the patent has not yet expired. It means you can't skip through the ads on your kids' DVDs, and you can't legally burn copies of your own CDs. It's why Office Space is funny, why your job sucks, and why you've always known that something is wrong with the world; like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.
It's why Ken Lay is still living the high life. Capitalism is the hand who makes Bush's mouth move and the force that saw the DMCA pass almost unanimously.
God bless America, and save it from Capitalism.
The United States (as originally designed) != capitalism.
Captilism is a new, post-industrial idea. The thinking is that things are run by the few who have scrambled to the top and can negotiate with each other for power and influence (see Rockefeller on this, who actually disdained the idea of a free market). I therefore don't subscribe to the idea that a government must be either Captilist or Communist. Call me a throwback, but I am kind of partial to the word free.
The three "changes" are hardware, not software. In other words, a new hard drive, a new sound card, and a new burner would be fine, but one more in less than 120 days would require activation.
OK, so the answer is yes. How expanding "changes" to events less significant than a reinstall supports your point is, I suppose, something I'll have to chalk up to "what universe am I in" question I asked earlier, and certainly doesn't help me determine WTF.
By the way, you never responded to my first point, that this sounds more like a different computer than an upgrade.
Well, the short answer is, I don't care. I don't agree with your assessment (some of us buy computers with the intent to move an already licensed operating system to them), but I don't think it's relevant to this discussion.
And people who are willing to pay will pay the record companies, if the price is reasonable.
Darmok, scratching his head quizzically.
That was the best they could do? I suppose the "all your base" thing hasn't made its way to the English countryside yet.
As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the chances of a comparison involving terrorism or bin Laden approaches one.
I therefore declare this thread over and whatever ideas you meant to express discredited.
Yes, but that's exactly what the nazis did.
I don't play in the XP land (never will), so I'm not as up on the terms and conditions. But I just have to ask...
W...T...F?
Second, XP allows three changes every 120 days.
They put a limit on how often you can reinstall? 3 every 120 days? Huh? I'm supposed to plan my upgrade activity around this arbitrary number decided from On High at Redmond? 3 per 120 days is consistent with neither the average runtime for a given install before complete entropic failure or for the average number of system destroying Microsoft virii per unit time. Where did they come up with that number? Do you windows users actually have conversations like, "Uh, yeah, boss, my system got fried by that slammer bug yesterday, and I can't reinstall until February."
No sympathy from me.
You know, I may just see things fundamentally differently than you. When I see something this - a statement so mind numbingly incongruent with any furtherance of any thought I might consider slightly rational, it occurs to me that I might be facing a cultural or mental barrier whose sheer profundity demands a complete reasessment of the known universe. Pursuant to that goal:
If we're on the same page thus far, then I have obviously waited far too long to leave the country.
Okay, so ordinary people develop a community and set of ad hoc standards which accurately inform everyone and serves as an adequate conveyance of trust. In so doing, we create the online mechanism of ensuring fairness and justice.
Then a lawyer comes along...
The disc is professionally recorded and pressed, and even includes a very well designed and nice looking insert. The quality of both is indistinguishable from RIAA material. I don't know what exactly they paid to have this done, but I know they couldn't have afforded anything in the 5 figure range.
Sir, you are smoking crack.
Uh, well, no, actually, I'm not. We could trade unsubstantiated personal anecdotes until we're blue in the face, but from my experience working on PCs to my systems integration work to my involvement on several large implementation projects to my experience as an MIS manager at a large law firm, I've been personally responsible for the operation of untold tens of thousands of computers running Windows (3x-2000). My statements of Windows' legendary instability derive directly from that experience. It's one thing to shoot your mouth off on slashdot about a technology or operating system; quite another to develop a workstation image plan to mitigate the staggering instability of said technology and have your job depend on how appropriately designed and well executed that plan is.
In short, I've been in the position of putting my money where my mouth is with regard to Windows, and my professional advice has served both myself and my customers well - backup often, and know where your reinstall discs are!
Or did you think that the BSOD is a cultural meme because of widespread socioeconomic envy toward Bill Gates?
In NT/2000/XP you can invariably kill the process and keep going.
Factually incorrect, sir. Based on my experience, you have about a 30% better chance of getting your computer back if you run 2000 vs. 9x. Hardly invariable.
There is also the little problem of progressive entropy. Anyone who runs windows regularly (including 2000) knows that every six or so months, the thing is just going to go loopy, and the only solution is to format the hard drive and reinstall. This is unheard of with Linux. I've used Linux since 1998, and I've seen two X crashes in that time. In both cases, the crash didn't lock the operating system. The only kernel panic I've heard of was related to the horrible death of a RAID controller, but I wasn't there, so I can't personally verify that kernel panics actually happen :).
So, should we do a breakdown on the amount of biomass is consumed by a pregnant human mother in the production of an infant? I'm sure a prodigious amount of animal and plant death is involved in the process (one can hear the cucumbers crying out as they're boiled in vinegar).
Are we supposed to feel guilty because of how expensive we or our tools are in terms of environmental impact? The last time I checked, WE evolved here, which makes us part of that environment. We are the product of that process. Furthermore, the really noble things we do revolve around the free exchange of information, which makes the expenditure of energy and resources supporting that endeavor noble as well.
Do you think an environmental impact study was done before the Mona Lisa was painted?
Thanks for the heads up regarding the differences in traffic analyzability between gnutella and freenet
Not gnutella - GNUnet. Gnutella is not anonymous in any way.
I do not believe they will feel that the evader was the user.
You may have something there.
They don't get prosecuted, because they have not done anything wrong.
Well, yes and no. If they can prove intent, posession of stolen property is a felony in most US jurisdictions. In actual practice, however, the only people who go to jail over this are those who have committed POP (pissing off the police), and were convicted on every conceivable charge because they tried to run over a cop or some such. In most cases, it's used as leverage to get people to identify and testify against the thief.
To prove that their machine had it, the "expert" would need verifiable copies of that data plus the encryption keys to access it
Well, there are two problems with what you suggest. The first is technical. Freenet is quite susceptible to traffic analysis. If law enforcement controls a sufficient number of nodes in sufficient proximity to your node, they can identify what data resides on it.
The second problem has to do with what passes for proof in American courts these days, particularly with regard to computer related crimes. According to your (accurate) definition of proof, the proof must be positive and clear. In the actual practice of criminal law, this is not the case. For example, you would think that in order to prove posession of child pornography, the subject in a given photograph must be identified and the date of the photo must be established in order to prove that the material is, in fact a picture of a child. Not so. The cops have a medical examiner look at the photo. All it takes at this point to put you in prison is a statement of "pre-pubescent breast morphology - apparent age - 14". If this standard of proof is all it takes to convince almost any jury that you belong behind bars (and it is), techno-babble about how you can't prove that is on the node will fall on very deaf ears. Even if a jury is somehow made to understand how freenet works, they will interpret it as deliberately evasive (and they'd be right), and will find guilt based on that fact. Indeed, there is legal precedent for the prosecution of those anonymously or indirectly involved in a crime - posession of stolen property.
In short, I think that if freenet is tested legally, it will be interpreted along the lines of a spoonfull of sewage in a barell full of wine. However fine the wine, it all becomes sewage after the addition of the former. Therefore, just using freenet is likely to land you in prison.
I'm not saying I like this state of affairs, but I have some experience in these matters, and I'm calling it as I see it. Since deniability cannot stand up as a legal defense, you must be in a position, as a p2p user, of being aware and in control of what is on your system. This is why I am rather optimistic about the way gnunet is put together. It is more resistant to traffic analysis than freenet, and storing data for the anonymous collective is optional rather than required. In this way, you at least are in control of what laws you are breaking. :)