This is really good news. I really hope that Dmitry Skylarov can go home to Russia soon.
On a side note, this case has gotten much more attention in international circles than it has in the US.
At my university I've met a woman from Ukraine who claims that for a while, atleast, there was daily coverage of the Skylarov predicament in the Ukrainian newspapers. Much like our terrorist coverage continues to dominate the news here in the land of the home, and the free of the brave.
For a moderately non-technical person, she seemed to have a very good grasp of the issues, albeit with a touch of (IMHO justified) "the US is doing this because they can" spin.
Well, I digress. Congrats, Dmitry. I hope you make it back to Russia before I visit there this winter.
From one journalist to another, this is probably not a good term to use the way you did.
I'm not wanting to be a PC thug, but here's the entry in the AP Style Book:
IndiansAmerican Indian is the preferred term for those in the United States. Where possible, be precise and use the name of the tribe: He is a Navajo commissioner. Native American is acceptable in quotations and names of organizations.
In news stories about American Indians, such words as wampum, warpath, powwow, tepee, brave, squaw, etc., can be disparaging and offensive. Be careful and certain of their usage.
No joke. Find me one authoritative, comprehensive (or nearly comprehensive) manual for Linux system administration. Go ahead I dare you. FreeBSD's handbook is great. And so are the man pages. After a long time using Linux I got into the habit of not reading man pages, but instead looking for a howto on one of the numerous sites. Now I type man, or if I need help with a general concept, I read the handbook.
If you read FreeBSD's handbook from front to back just casually, I guarantee that you'll be able to fix damn near anything on FreeBSD with the handbook as a reference. I'm now subscribed to the FreeBSD documentation mailing list, and I must say that they are a tight ship, and very professional.
For new users wanting to learn *NIX. I send them to FreeBSD. The learning curve is percieved to be steeper only because they do not abstract things for you. Where they do abstract things (/stand/sysinstall) they do so in a logical and completely coherent way. Plus they document the hell out of it.
After leaving Linux for the most part, my UNIX skills have grow exponentially, because I know HOW to figure stuff out now. As a result, I know a lot of other "tricks" that many Linux users don't about their own OS.
Don't get me wrong, I love Linux, and I'd probably still be using it if it weren't for *BSD.
Unless you decide to kill every man woman and child in Afghanistan a military strike against Afghanistan (Afghanistan did not declare war) will only aid Bin Laden in a recruitment drive.
Thank God, or whatever that there are still sane people walking the earth.
Yes, treating the people of Afghanistan fairly for once would be a firm kick to Osama's nuts.
I've got to admit that I actually think in this case a single nuke should be used precisely for deterrent effect on future terrorist attacks.
Someone mod this person down and then find where he lives and slap the piss out of him.
OK, that was as reactionary a response as I'll ever make. But seriously folks. This was an act of terrorism, not (I repeat) not an act of war.
You do not combat terrorists by making their children hate you. That only ensures that your children will become prey.
Not that I'm some kind of anti-communist, but the Marshall plan really succeeded. For better or for worse, we made capitalism the best game in town.
"Uncle Sam the Benevolent" is less likely to be bombed, poisoned, nuked, or flown into than "Uncle Sam the 'we kill innocents with nukes'".
So, how do we respond to this?
We respond by using international channels. I say that we try these bastards in the World Court. Such an action by the the United States would be met with such shock on the international scene that I'm sure Bin Laden would be found within the week. Countries would be falling over themselves to make sure the US has a satisfying experience following the "proper" channels.
Then, we must truly get over our racist attitudes towards Arabs. Muslim != terrorist. "Christians are murderers. Just look at the IRA." Sound stupid? You bet it does.
Arrggghh! OK... I've vented. Sorry to unload under this topic, but shit! Nuclear retalliation?!? Jesus H. Christ people! Get a grip. Yes, a lot of people died. Try not to run after them like lemmings to the sea.
In my senior seminar in journalism, my professor talked about this. He explains it like this:
"The doctor never panics."
I'm sure that after the coverage is over, many of these journalists go home and sob. Journalists can be very detached in time of crisis. It lets them get their job done. Afterward, they are given the luxury to feel their own emotions.
Journalists are tinkerers. We are curious. We want to know what is going on. Think of the greater panic if people would have been unable to find out exactly what happened. Sure this is horrific, but knowing the extent of the horror is the first step in comming to terms with it.
I was thinking the same thing. I'm not a Baha'i (I think?), but if people embraced some of the very progressive, enlightened, and gentle philosophies of the Baha'i, I think that such horrors might be averted.
Ofcourse, many of the same things could be said about many religions / philosophies.
I have to say that LyX has saved my ass more than one doing academic papers.
Anyone who uses anything else for serious documents is smoking crack. If you are writing a thesis or a book, you will NOT lose data. Period. LyX saves pretty much after every keystroke it seems.
After using LyX to do footnotes you will agree that footnotes suck everwhere else.
The sheer volume of information that needs to be assimilated just to get a version of BSD/Linux installed is enormous to the average user.
I recently taught a short course on FreeBSD at my university.
Why did I pick FreeBSD? Because it is really easy to install, but still doesn't abstract things with wizards.
The audience of the class were people who had never touched UNIX before and only two of my students had ever even installed Windows.
Every single one of my students was able to install FreeBSD at the end of the class. This was even after they were bombarded for two weeks with things like package management, X11, Window Maker, KDE, StarOffice, gimp, etc.
They were able to mainly intuit the install afterward.
FreeBSD is darned easy to install, and even easier to use afterward. If FreeBSD ever added a gui to the install, people would be bitching that MacOS was hard to install.
As a (now) longtime Linux/BSD user, I have to say: FreeBSD is as easy as UNIX installs get. And I'll say its easier than any version of Windows to install other than Win2k.
GNUstep seems like a great idea that already has been carefully planned out. Not only that, but they are a good portion of the way toward having a useable system.
Not only that, but Objective C is apparently pretty bad-ass. It already runs on more platforms than C# is planned to run on, and C programmers apparently like it.
I love the idea that OS APIs be defined by a standards body, but I don't know how it would apply the same way as HTML or XML or OpenGL.
Still the W3C has made the web suck a whole lot less. Maybe it would be worth seeing how a standards body could be applicable.
Wow, this translation really sucks. I'm going to start my second year of Russian next year, and this article isn't horrible to read provided you have a good dictionary and know the cyrillic alphabet.
Ok, done griping. So, with all the seemingly brilliant Russian computer scientists running around, it seems to me that Russian might be a really good language for geeks to learn.
Does anyone here know Russian? Have any of these people found it easier to find jobs because of it?
I like to build from ports for things that need a whole lot of customisation (say mod_php). But for things like gimp that are pretty generic, I'll grab the binary packages because its a whole hell of a lot faster. (Yes even faster than compiling on my 1ghz Athalon.)
Every time I think that FreeBSD has let me down, I find out that I was just stupid.
Let me first say that I LOVE SLACKWARE. I have never been able to set up another Linux box that I've been nearly as happy with as an "out of the box" Slack install. (Plus, you have to love the pipe smoking slack penguin; hail Bob.)
For those of you fellow Slak people, I strongly reccommend that you check out FreeBSD.
No, wait! Don't go! I'm not trolling.
Slackware is, by far, the most BSD like Linux distro out there, and you will find many things to be very similar.
For example, both are incredibly stable (degrees better than anything I can think of commercial or Free). Both are very stable development and "source friendly" systems. Both have an absolutely marvelous selected group of packages.
Why try FreeBSD if both are so similar? Well, there are a couple of places where I think that FreeBSD outshines.
Slackware's package management (yes, it does exist, and it works) is not as comprehensive as FreeBSD's. FreeBSD has a mechanism for automatically downloading source, compiling it, installing it, and registering it in the package db with one command(this is called the ports collection). For binary people,/stand/sysinstall with your installation source set to any official FreeBSD mirror is BRAINLESS to install new binary software packs, and it gets registered in the same place as the ports do.
I guess it boils down to ease of use. FreeBSD is the easiest free Unix clone that I can think of. They made the system easy by design, not by abstraction with a gui installer.
I'm teaching a short course for UNIX newbies at my university through our IT department. What am I using? FreeBSD. It's that easy, and it's got all the stability of really great distros like Slackware.
The superstar musicians (the ones who make money from CD sales and royalties) are rarely the talented ones.
I'm sorry. I have friends who are music majors and are, IMHO, millions of times better than the likes of Brittany Spears.
Even if you think Spears is the greatest musician ever, I still doubt that she puts the same amount of work into truely mastering music that my friends have.
I'm going to argue that it is better for regional stars to arise because people like them, not because some fat cat record company propped them up.
I know some fantastic jazz musicians who play for a subsistance lifestyle that enables them to spend all their time doing what they love.
Perhaps art is dead elsewhere, but where I come from we like our local bands. Many of our local bands are every bit as good as anyone else, and they are funner to listen to because they are people.
Actually, installing softupdates on / and/tmp should be quite easy.
Simply start your computer and hit some key other than when it start the countdown.
type: boot -s
FreeBSD will drop you to single user mode with only / mounted in ro mode.
From here just type:
tunefs -n enable /
tunefs -n enable/tmp
That did it for me anyway.
Incidentally, I love FreeBSD as a workstation. I've found it logical and coherent in a way that my linux boxen just aren't.
I've very lazy about building the latest software. FreeBSD's ports does the heavy lifting. Nothing compares to the BSD package/ports system.
I finally took the time to really learn apt-get on Debian, and I must say it is really great. I like it much better than any other Linux package management. It still pales to BSD's packages/ports. Sorry.
Seriously, if you are an xterm junkie, give rxvt a shot. It has lots of cool features that xterm doesn't (transparency, a scroll bar that is usefull, etc.) and it suposedly has a smaller memory footprint than xterm.
Three scientists are shipwrecked on a desert island: a physicist, a chemist, and an economist. They recover a lone can of beans from their ship, but unfortunately have no way of opening the can.
The physicist suggests that she climb a tree and drop the can onto a stone in such a way as to pop the top.
The chemist replies that such an action would also spill the beans out over the sand. The chemist proposes that he whip up a solution from sea water to corrode the top off.
The economist who had been sitting quietly finally chimes in. "You two are making this far too difficult," said the economist. "First, let's assume a can opener."
This idea relies on a lot of assumptions that are made in highschool economics classes. A beautiful framework of ideas to say the least. Too bad they don't work. They mainly serve to redistribute wealth from the bottom up. Adam Smith would be rolling in his grave if he heard his theories so butchered.
Smith's model presupposed a level of economic equality as a prerequisite. Incidentally, he also disliked corporations, because he argued that a businesses capital must be rooted in one place.
The moral of this story is that the free market really shouldn't exist.
The Cult of the Free Market would have us believe that the free market will optimally distribute wealth and resources. The fact is that it hasn't. The free market is not a well oiled machine. Just like a good Linux box, the economy does require some system administration.
Good system administrators don't rule with an iron fist, but they also know that 2 percent of their users shouldn't be sucking 90% of the system resources.
Arrgghhh!!! Yes, if people wish to engage in "race to the bottom" economics (which economic libertarianism is) that is perfectly within their rights.
When does the next "Super Wal*Mart" start infringing on my rights? My city council fought tooth and nail to keep those bastards out of town to no avail.
/rant> This cult of the free market bullshit is the rationale that they used to come in and offer us low, low prices.
Fuck the fact that they depress wages, cause loads of pollution from car traffic, blight the landscape, exploit 3rd world laborers, and ultimately require taxpayer subsidies to "improve" transportation routes (meaning bike traffic is impossible).
Wake up people! THE FREE MARKET NEITHER EXISTS NOR WORKS!!!
We have a mixed economy with elements of socialism and capitalism. We used to have a hell of a lot more socialism, and a higher percentage of Americans enjoyed a higher quality of life.
Slashdot Mirror
On a side note, this case has gotten much more attention in international circles than it has in the US.
At my university I've met a woman from Ukraine who claims that for a while, atleast, there was daily coverage of the Skylarov predicament in the Ukrainian newspapers. Much like our terrorist coverage continues to dominate the news here in the land of the home, and the free of the brave.
For a moderately non-technical person, she seemed to have a very good grasp of the issues, albeit with a touch of (IMHO justified) "the US is doing this because they can" spin.
Well, I digress. Congrats, Dmitry. I hope you make it back to Russia before I visit there this winter.
-Peter
I'm not wanting to be a PC thug, but here's the entry in the AP Style Book:
Indians American Indian is the preferred term for those in the United States. Where possible, be precise and use the name of the tribe: He is a Navajo commissioner. Native American is acceptable in quotations and names of organizations.
In news stories about American Indians, such words as wampum, warpath, powwow, tepee, brave, squaw, etc., can be disparaging and offensive. Be careful and certain of their usage.
-Peter
If you read FreeBSD's handbook from front to back just casually, I guarantee that you'll be able to fix damn near anything on FreeBSD with the handbook as a reference. I'm now subscribed to the FreeBSD documentation mailing list, and I must say that they are a tight ship, and very professional.
For new users wanting to learn *NIX. I send them to FreeBSD. The learning curve is percieved to be steeper only because they do not abstract things for you. Where they do abstract things (/stand/sysinstall) they do so in a logical and completely coherent way. Plus they document the hell out of it.
After leaving Linux for the most part, my UNIX skills have grow exponentially, because I know HOW to figure stuff out now. As a result, I know a lot of other "tricks" that many Linux users don't about their own OS.
Don't get me wrong, I love Linux, and I'd probably still be using it if it weren't for *BSD.
-Peter
Unless you decide to kill every man woman and child in Afghanistan a military strike against Afghanistan (Afghanistan did not declare war) will only aid Bin Laden in a recruitment drive.
Thank God, or whatever that there are still sane people walking the earth.
Yes, treating the people of Afghanistan fairly for once would be a firm kick to Osama's nuts.
-Peter
Someone mod this person down and then find where he lives and slap the piss out of him.
OK, that was as reactionary a response as I'll ever make. But seriously folks. This was an act of terrorism, not (I repeat) not an act of war.
You do not combat terrorists by making their children hate you. That only ensures that your children will become prey.
Not that I'm some kind of anti-communist, but the Marshall plan really succeeded. For better or for worse, we made capitalism the best game in town.
"Uncle Sam the Benevolent" is less likely to be bombed, poisoned, nuked, or flown into than "Uncle Sam the 'we kill innocents with nukes'".
So, how do we respond to this?
We respond by using international channels. I say that we try these bastards in the World Court. Such an action by the the United States would be met with such shock on the international scene that I'm sure Bin Laden would be found within the week. Countries would be falling over themselves to make sure the US has a satisfying experience following the "proper" channels.
Then, we must truly get over our racist attitudes towards Arabs. Muslim != terrorist. "Christians are murderers. Just look at the IRA." Sound stupid? You bet it does.
Arrggghh! OK... I've vented. Sorry to unload under this topic, but shit! Nuclear retalliation?!? Jesus H. Christ people! Get a grip. Yes, a lot of people died. Try not to run after them like lemmings to the sea.
-Peter
"The doctor never panics."
I'm sure that after the coverage is over, many of these journalists go home and sob. Journalists can be very detached in time of crisis. It lets them get their job done. Afterward, they are given the luxury to feel their own emotions.
Journalists are tinkerers. We are curious. We want to know what is going on. Think of the greater panic if people would have been unable to find out exactly what happened. Sure this is horrific, but knowing the extent of the horror is the first step in comming to terms with it.
-Peter
I was thinking the same thing. I'm not a Baha'i (I think?), but if people embraced some of the very progressive, enlightened, and gentle philosophies of the Baha'i, I think that such horrors might be averted.
Ofcourse, many of the same things could be said about many religions / philosophies.
Cheers,
Peter
I have to say that LyX has saved my ass more than one doing academic papers.
Anyone who uses anything else for serious documents is smoking crack. If you are writing a thesis or a book, you will NOT lose data. Period. LyX saves pretty much after every keystroke it seems.
After using LyX to do footnotes you will agree that footnotes suck everwhere else.
-Peter
WTF? Figuring out SCSI chains and figuring out obscure SRM firmware commands were part of what made installing Linux FUN on alpha!
Oooh how I long to install Milo again.
On a more serious note, FreeBSD was a dream to install on the old Alpha Stations. Muuuuuuch easier than installing Linux.
Incidentally, I've found OpenBSD easier to install on PPC than Linux on PPC. YMMV.
-Peter
I recently taught a short course on FreeBSD at my university.
Why did I pick FreeBSD? Because it is really easy to install, but still doesn't abstract things with wizards.
The audience of the class were people who had never touched UNIX before and only two of my students had ever even installed Windows.
Every single one of my students was able to install FreeBSD at the end of the class. This was even after they were bombarded for two weeks with things like package management, X11, Window Maker, KDE, StarOffice, gimp, etc.
They were able to mainly intuit the install afterward.
FreeBSD is darned easy to install, and even easier to use afterward. If FreeBSD ever added a gui to the install, people would be bitching that MacOS was hard to install.
As a (now) longtime Linux/BSD user, I have to say: FreeBSD is as easy as UNIX installs get. And I'll say its easier than any version of Windows to install other than Win2k.
-Peter
Hope this doesn't sound troll, but use KOffice. KDE 2.2 should be out today. I think it will include a much improved KOffice.
-Peter
I realize this is probably just them squatting, but still, makes you wonder.
I really love the BeOS. It is still the best damned user interface ever (and it was unique in many respects). The user experience was great.
I'd probably still be using it if it weren't for the fact that none of my new hardware is supported.
I know that BeOS is dead and gone. I used to love OS/2 also. And if the BSD trolls are right, my current OS (FreeBSD, I do love thee) is doomed!
-Peter
I knew I should have learned to like Microsoft.
Not only that, but Objective C is apparently pretty bad-ass. It already runs on more platforms than C# is planned to run on, and C programmers apparently like it.
I love the idea that OS APIs be defined by a standards body, but I don't know how it would apply the same way as HTML or XML or OpenGL.
Still the W3C has made the web suck a whole lot less. Maybe it would be worth seeing how a standards body could be applicable.
-Peter
Ok, done griping. So, with all the seemingly brilliant Russian computer scientists running around, it seems to me that Russian might be a really good language for geeks to learn.
Does anyone here know Russian? Have any of these people found it easier to find jobs because of it?
Just a thought.
-Peter
I had a laptop die on me that I installed FreeBSD (read: the machine wouldn't even go into the bios to set boot device order)
IBM's solution? Buy a new harddrive, because you screwed up the one we shipped you.
My solution? I had to use a laptop mini-ide to IDE adaptor and reformat the harddisk.
Later I found out that a bios update fixed this problem.
All is well now, and FreeBSD works swimingly on the IBM a20.
-Peter
setopt AUTO_LIST AUTO_MENU
PROMPT='%m}%~> '
Give zsh a shot. It really is pretty cool.
-Peter
Actually a line like this will get all dependencies automagically the same way the ports collection does:
pkg_add ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/packages/
I like to build from ports for things that need a whole lot of customisation (say mod_php). But for things like gimp that are pretty generic, I'll grab the binary packages because its a whole hell of a lot faster. (Yes even faster than compiling on my 1ghz Athalon.)
Every time I think that FreeBSD has let me down, I find out that I was just stupid.
-Peter
For those of you fellow Slak people, I strongly reccommend that you check out FreeBSD.
No, wait! Don't go! I'm not trolling.
Slackware is, by far, the most BSD like Linux distro out there, and you will find many things to be very similar.
For example, both are incredibly stable (degrees better than anything I can think of commercial or Free). Both are very stable development and "source friendly" systems. Both have an absolutely marvelous selected group of packages.
Why try FreeBSD if both are so similar? Well, there are a couple of places where I think that FreeBSD outshines.
Slackware's package management (yes, it does exist, and it works) is not as comprehensive as FreeBSD's. FreeBSD has a mechanism for automatically downloading source, compiling it, installing it, and registering it in the package db with one command(this is called the ports collection). For binary people,
I guess it boils down to ease of use. FreeBSD is the easiest free Unix clone that I can think of. They made the system easy by design, not by abstraction with a gui installer.
I'm teaching a short course for UNIX newbies at my university through our IT department. What am I using? FreeBSD. It's that easy, and it's got all the stability of really great distros like Slackware.
-Peter
I'm sorry. I have friends who are music majors and are, IMHO, millions of times better than the likes of Brittany Spears.
Even if you think Spears is the greatest musician ever, I still doubt that she puts the same amount of work into truely mastering music that my friends have.
I'm going to argue that it is better for regional stars to arise because people like them, not because some fat cat record company propped them up.
I know some fantastic jazz musicians who play for a subsistance lifestyle that enables them to spend all their time doing what they love.
Perhaps art is dead elsewhere, but where I come from we like our local bands. Many of our local bands are every bit as good as anyone else, and they are funner to listen to because they are people.
-Peter
Has anyone found any other (human) languages that have helped them get jobs in the tech industry?
I'm not sure I like the idea of being prying eyes, but the FBI could be an exciting tech job if nothing else.
-Peter
Simply start your computer and hit some key other than when it start the countdown.
type: boot -s
FreeBSD will drop you to single user mode with only / mounted in ro mode.
From here just type:
tunefs -n enable /
tunefs -n enable
That did it for me anyway.
Incidentally, I love FreeBSD as a workstation. I've found it logical and coherent in a way that my linux boxen just aren't.
I've very lazy about building the latest software. FreeBSD's ports does the heavy lifting. Nothing compares to the BSD package/ports system.
I finally took the time to really learn apt-get on Debian, and I must say it is really great. I like it much better than any other Linux package management. It still pales to BSD's packages/ports. Sorry.
-Peter
Seriously, if you are an xterm junkie, give rxvt a shot. It has lots of cool features that xterm doesn't (transparency, a scroll bar that is usefull, etc.) and it suposedly has a smaller memory footprint than xterm.
My favorite settings for an rxvt?
rxvt -fg green -bg black -geometry 80x50 +sb
Want a secure remote shell?
rxvt -fg orange -bg black -geometry 80x50 +sb -e ssh -l [username] [remote.host.name]
I like to set these up as menu items in my windowmaker menus and assign a short cut: [windows][alt][t] for a new rxvt!
-Peter
The physicist suggests that she climb a tree and drop the can onto a stone in such a way as to pop the top.
The chemist replies that such an action would also spill the beans out over the sand. The chemist proposes that he whip up a solution from sea water to corrode the top off.
The economist who had been sitting quietly finally chimes in. "You two are making this far too difficult," said the economist. "First, let's assume a can opener."
This idea relies on a lot of assumptions that are made in highschool economics classes. A beautiful framework of ideas to say the least. Too bad they don't work. They mainly serve to redistribute wealth from the bottom up. Adam Smith would be rolling in his grave if he heard his theories so butchered.
Smith's model presupposed a level of economic equality as a prerequisite. Incidentally, he also disliked corporations, because he argued that a businesses capital must be rooted in one place.
The moral of this story is that the free market really shouldn't exist.
The Cult of the Free Market would have us believe that the free market will optimally distribute wealth and resources. The fact is that it hasn't. The free market is not a well oiled machine. Just like a good Linux box, the economy does require some system administration.
Good system administrators don't rule with an iron fist, but they also know that 2 percent of their users shouldn't be sucking 90% of the system resources.
-Peter
Last I checked, my state (Montana) was 3rd from the bottom in overall economic health. We were last in median income.
We lead the nation in persons who work second and third jobs.
-Peter
Arrgghhh!!! Yes, if people wish to engage in "race to the bottom" economics (which economic libertarianism is) that is perfectly within their rights.
When does the next "Super Wal*Mart" start infringing on my rights? My city council fought tooth and nail to keep those bastards out of town to no avail.
/rant> This cult of the free market bullshit is the rationale that they used to come in and offer us low, low prices.
Fuck the fact that they depress wages, cause loads of pollution from car traffic, blight the landscape, exploit 3rd world laborers, and ultimately require taxpayer subsidies to "improve" transportation routes (meaning bike traffic is impossible).
Wake up people! THE FREE MARKET NEITHER EXISTS NOR WORKS!!!
We have a mixed economy with elements of socialism and capitalism. We used to have a hell of a lot more socialism, and a higher percentage of Americans enjoyed a higher quality of life.
-Peter
(intentionally not closing "RANT" tag.)