I saw the "white Trash" lamp a while back, and on that page it mentions that sooner or later, if you add dyes to your liquids, the colours will bleed across the interface.
I did some experimenting with a selection of food dyes by means of a countercurrent extraction, a purification technique which is very cheap and simple to carry out (check any analytical chemistry textbook, or try Google) and I came up with a nice highly-polar blue dye that doesn't leak into the oil. Unfortunately, the dye bottles didn't say what the ingredients were.
People need to take responsibility for their own actions and realize that their actions have consequences
So people should learn to be proactive about securing their systems (whether or not they insist on using a system that is "insecure by design") instead of bleating when they get bitten by the latest bug.
I am getting to the point where if (when) my acquaintances tell me they've been hit by the virus du jour I am often not very sympathetic. If they applied common-sense with their email client settings, the majority of these problems simply would not occur.
Doesn't sound odd to me. IANALKD (I am not a Linux kernel developer, since I just made up the acronym) but I spent many years as a sysprog on mainframe (non-Unix) operating systems. My point is that this kind of thing should be what you do for fun, and if someone wants to pay you for it then you are a very lucky individual.
The thing to do is to write the best code you can on a couple of projects, put them to one side for 3 months or so, then take another critical look at what you've written. If you still believe your code is hot shit, by all means submit it, but most of us (even the best of programmers) don't stand up too well under the cold light of this kind of self-examination.
the collapse of yugoslavia (in the balkan peninsula) into a bunch of little racially-divided countries
The same countries, in fact, that they were a hundred years ago before they were artificially united. Looks like some things are doomed from the start.
Even if you were to laminate it cold, the platic would react with the thermal paper. That's why they tell you not to keep thermally printed paper in plastic bags.
Fair enough. That's why (though I am a confirmed Gnome fan) I usually try to get people to play with WindowMaker on a new installation, just to get away from all those Windows-ish expectations.
The whole point of the issue is that we do not want a "standard" rammed down our throats.
Microsoft has had years' worth of value in promoting their products as so-called "standards", and many of us have had enough.
If "someone" were to decide that the "one true" interface was going to be KDE or Gnome or whatever, many happy users of open source software would object, and rightly so.
If that means that Linux will not overtake Windows on the desktop market, then so be it. Let's face it, most Windows users will not even consider switching anyway.
The whole point of the open-source initiatives is to allow the user to make choices. Most (or at least many) users want to be told what to do, not to make choices as to how to do it.
instead of continuing to get caught in these embarassing lawsuits
Embarassment probably doesn't mean anything to Microsoft. As long as they can pursuade government departments or your granny (and nearly every clueless person in between) that Windows and MS products are the way, the truth and the light, they'll continue to rake in the dollars.
I had a frustrating experience last week when I was trying to explain alternatives to an acquaintance who, when asked what he used his computer systems for, since he was so adamant that Windows had to be installed, and he said "everything. Absolutely everything".
When pressed, it turned out that his staff used Word, IE and Excel for very basic tasks that could easily be accommodated by open-source alternatives.
He wouldn't even consider the idea; just too far out of his head-space.
True. Abiword has lots of things going for it (not least the fact that it's *much* quicker to load than OpenOffice) but being based around yet another file format can be a real show-stopper.
Yes. it's called emacs. And you don't even have to be running X, or even Linux for that matter.
Yes, I know it takes a couple of days to get productive with it, but once you've got past the initial learning curve it's very easy, and quick to use with Tex if you're into real typesetting.
Many years ago (back in the early 80s), I was employed by a leading UK aeronautical technologies company to work on security. One of my briefs was to write software that would compromise or disable hardware of any intruder using 8086 and 8088 CPUs under DOS.
These were probably among the first viruses (though nobody called them as such then), since they were designed to propagate from host to host. They were, by present standards, quite primitive but nonetheless effective.
The rationale was that if we couldn't stop intruders from getting in, then we should at least make sure they couldn't do anything useful.
so many suspended licenses would cause a revolt in traffic laws.
Not necessarily. People get used to oppression very quickly.
Here in Western Australia, where the automatic revenue-collection machine has been honed to a fine edge, a situation has arisen where since unpaid fines result in automatic suspension of driving licences, quite a large percentage of cars on the road are being driven without valid licences.
As third-party insurance is dependent on the current status of the driver's licence, sooner or later something's going to have to give.
Seems we haven't had enough cases (yet) where individuals have got hurt to provoke the knee-jerk reaction which passes here for policy-making.
True. But I hope the other media don't repeat this story too loudly, otherwise the nanny-state mentality prevalent here in Australia will get wind of the idea ant take it up with glee.
Back to the point: I would have thought that saying "you'd better climb down off your high horse before we shoot that sucker entirely out from under you." and telling the addressee that he's in for a bad time would be unlikely to be interpreted as a "threat" in any legal sense. (IANAL, but my brother-in-law is...)
I'm not too sure why your post has been modded as flamebait. Someone's smoking crack. Must be SC....
Never mind. I had actually almost forgotten what Plan9 was until I went back to the site and reminded myself.
Seems to me that Plan9 was a good idea in its time. There was never anything really wrong with it, and for some people it's the best thing since unsliced bread, but it seems most of us have moved on.
The article should have been about a new sendmail hole
Well, Overly Critical Guy, the hole he mentioned was last March, and has been dealt with long ago (IIRC, immediately).
Given that, as the dictum states, all non-trivial programs have at least one bug, and that sendmail is definitely not what I would call a trivial program, what is there to discuss?
It's not as if the developers sat on their hands or hushed the matter up.
Sure, sendmail has had holes found in it from time to time. But we should remember that it has been a very *long* time, and for most people it has been stable as a rock. And I have never yet met anyone whose system has been compromised as a result of these holes. We also shouldn't forget that whenever bugs have been found, they have been fixed immediately (if not before).
Compare this to the antics of "that corporation" who is quite content to leave bugs as "undocumented features". Could be this FUD is just a reaction to that "insecure by design" mudslinging.
I think the original poster has read his Douglas Adams books ass-about.
...those familiar w/ the Hitchhiker's Guide will remember the drink dispenser from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe which, trying to figure out how to brew the perfect cuppa, grabs all available computing resources on board a certain starship.
It was Arthur Dent who was responsible for this. Sorry to be pedantic, but some things are important:-).
Slashdot Mirror
I saw the "white Trash" lamp a while back, and on that page it mentions that sooner or later, if you add dyes to your liquids, the colours will bleed across the interface.
I did some experimenting with a selection of food dyes by means of a countercurrent extraction, a purification technique which is very cheap and simple to carry out (check any analytical chemistry textbook, or try Google) and I came up with a nice highly-polar blue dye that doesn't leak into the oil. Unfortunately, the dye bottles didn't say what the ingredients were.
Not quite; it just means he doesn't have as good a lawyer as the prosecution.
No. There's another word for it: lynching.
So people should learn to be proactive about securing their systems (whether or not they insist on using a system that is "insecure by design") instead of bleating when they get bitten by the latest bug.
I am getting to the point where if (when) my acquaintances tell me they've been hit by the virus du jour I am often not very sympathetic. If they applied common-sense with their email client settings, the majority of these problems simply would not occur.
Doesn't sound odd to me. IANALKD (I am not a Linux kernel developer, since I just made up the acronym) but I spent many years as a sysprog on mainframe (non-Unix) operating systems. My point is that this kind of thing should be what you do for fun, and if someone wants to pay you for it then you are a very lucky individual.
The thing to do is to write the best code you can on a couple of projects, put them to one side for 3 months or so, then take another critical look at what you've written. If you still believe your code is hot shit, by all means submit it, but most of us (even the best of programmers) don't stand up too well under the cold light of this kind of self-examination.
Linux has been on my own desktop machines for the last seven years, and never once have I missed Windows.
The only real quirks I have come across have been when some clueless fool has insisted on sending me MS Publisher attachments.
But in those cases, most people with MS Publisher can't read them either, given the MS policy of breaking compatibility with every release.
The same countries, in fact, that they were a hundred years ago before they were artificially united. Looks like some things are doomed from the start.
Mostly it's not there at all.
Even if you were to laminate it cold, the platic would react with the thermal paper. That's why they tell you not to keep thermally printed paper in plastic bags.
Fair enough. That's why (though I am a confirmed Gnome fan) I usually try to get people to play with WindowMaker on a new installation, just to get away from all those Windows-ish expectations.
Microsoft has had years' worth of value in promoting their products as so-called "standards", and many of us have had enough.
If "someone" were to decide that the "one true" interface was going to be KDE or Gnome or whatever, many happy users of open source software would object, and rightly so.
If that means that Linux will not overtake Windows on the desktop market, then so be it. Let's face it, most Windows users will not even consider switching anyway.
The whole point of the open-source initiatives is to allow the user to make choices. Most (or at least many) users want to be told what to do, not to make choices as to how to do it.
Embarassment probably doesn't mean anything to Microsoft. As long as they can pursuade government departments or your granny (and nearly every clueless person in between) that Windows and MS products are the way, the truth and the light, they'll continue to rake in the dollars.
I had a frustrating experience last week when I was trying to explain alternatives to an acquaintance who, when asked what he used his computer systems for, since he was so adamant that Windows had to be installed, and he said "everything. Absolutely everything".
When pressed, it turned out that his staff used Word, IE and Excel for very basic tasks that could easily be accommodated by open-source alternatives.
He wouldn't even consider the idea; just too far out of his head-space.
True. Abiword has lots of things going for it (not least the fact that it's *much* quicker to load than OpenOffice) but being based around yet another file format can be a real show-stopper.
Yes. it's called emacs. And you don't even have to be running X, or even Linux for that matter.
Yes, I know it takes a couple of days to get productive with it, but once you've got past the initial learning curve it's very easy, and quick to use with Tex if you're into real typesetting.
Reminds me of this from the "Troubleshooting" pages in a Hitachi hammer-drill manual:
Problem: Drill wont [sic] run.
Reason: Groceries in commutator.
Solution: Remove groceries from commutator.
These were probably among the first viruses (though nobody called them as such then), since they were designed to propagate from host to host. They were, by present standards, quite primitive but nonetheless effective.
The rationale was that if we couldn't stop intruders from getting in, then we should at least make sure they couldn't do anything useful.
Not necessarily. People get used to oppression very quickly.
Here in Western Australia, where the automatic revenue-collection machine has been honed to a fine edge, a situation has arisen where since unpaid fines result in automatic suspension of driving licences, quite a large percentage of cars on the road are being driven without valid licences.
As third-party insurance is dependent on the current status of the driver's licence, sooner or later something's going to have to give.
Seems we haven't had enough cases (yet) where individuals have got hurt to provoke the knee-jerk reaction which passes here for policy-making.
True. But I hope the other media don't repeat this story too loudly, otherwise the nanny-state mentality prevalent here in Australia will get wind of the idea ant take it up with glee.
:-)
See?
Back to the point: I would have thought that saying "you'd better climb down off your high horse before we shoot that sucker entirely out from under you." and telling the addressee that he's in for a bad time would be unlikely to be interpreted as a "threat" in any legal sense. (IANAL, but my brother-in-law is...)
Never mind. I had actually almost forgotten what Plan9 was until I went back to the site and reminded myself.
Seems to me that Plan9 was a good idea in its time. There was never anything really wrong with it, and for some people it's the best thing since unsliced bread, but it seems most of us have moved on.
By a "long time" I meant that sendmail has been in use for one. The rest of your post actually indicates that you agree with me :-).
Well, Overly Critical Guy, the hole he mentioned was last March, and has been dealt with long ago (IIRC, immediately).
Given that, as the dictum states, all non-trivial programs have at least one bug, and that sendmail is definitely not what I would call a trivial program, what is there to discuss?
It's not as if the developers sat on their hands or hushed the matter up.
Compare this to the antics of "that corporation" who is quite content to leave bugs as "undocumented features". Could be this FUD is just a reaction to that "insecure by design" mudslinging.
Hell, you're right. I've re-read the books so many times, I'd almost forgotten about the radio play.
I humbly and abjectly apologise :-)
It was Arthur Dent who was responsible for this. Sorry to be pedantic, but some things are important :-).