the CPU is not a signifigant bottleneck in modern systems.
I don't know about your machines, but a careful look at gtop on my two home systems (a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 and a 1 GHz Athlon) seem to indicate the main areas of contention tend to be fairly evenly divided between the motherboard and the CPU. Sure, we can measure CPU and disk drive activity independently of each other, but that usually doesn't tell us a lot. Often logjams can be reduced only by upgrading the motherboard.
you're probably leaving behind sweat molecules and skin cells which contain your DNA
Indeed, but there are risks inherent in this, in that any surface is going to be littered with DNA, whether it be from a suspect's fingerprints or from the hamburger that the cop put on the piece of paper before/after taking the prints... well, you get the message.
And yes, DNA can survive cooking. But with very small samples, even if you do amplify it by means of polymerase chain reaction techniques to something large enough to be analysed, anybody presenting this as evidence has to be pretty sure of himself.
I've seen pictures of some blots presented in court that should have been summarily thrown out, but were not due to the simple fact that the judge was a layman, not a molecular biologist.
Hmmm. You seem to agree with much of what I was saying:
[snip]We implemented a filter file for the proxy and traffic went from ~97% down to ~30% utilization.
That is exactly what I was talking about when I mentioned applying appropriate security and traffic measures. I fail to see any difference accruing to the user's choice of platform.
[snip]You go back to being a scientist and I'll go back to saving people like you from yourselves with your lack of understanding regarding the need for real security policy.
FYI, I spent 15 years as a systems programmer specialising in security before I jumped fields into biotech, so I believe I have a claim to know what I'm talking about:-) and IIRC just about every major Linux distribution I have come across is arguably more secure by default than Windows can be with a lot of tweaking from sysadmins.
Ultimately, though, security should be applied at the network level, particularly if, as you say, you can't trust your users.
I'm sorry, but I believe your post is largely FUD. It really depends on what type of work your shop needs to do. If you have a large number of people using their computers for a range of operations, it is counter-productive to force staff to use any operating system that, for whatever reason, they see as sub-optimal, no matter whether it be Windows. MacOSX or BeOS.
In my case (I'm a scientist) I would be seriously inconvenienced if some pointy-headed bureaucratic fool came along and overwrote my Linux partitions with Windows, and my immediate reaction would be to take it up with his boss.
You seem to be operating on the premise that all staff are luddites, vandals or criminals and not to be trusted. I would have thought that, far from losing sleep over this, you should be pleased that this is one person who is not going to be passing out viruses via Lookout Express. In any base, as long as you implement sensible policies (firewalling, quotas or whatever you need to do) there is no reason why your network should not operate transparently without applying unnecessary restrictions.
the RIAA is mainly targeting very popular main stream type stuff
Who do they think they are kidding? The RIAA pretty much only publish mainstream stuff. I've just been looking at the CD labels I've bought over the last year, and none of them are RIAA members.
Maybe it's a conspiracy on the part of real musicians, let's see:
1. Prod RIAA into prosecuting anyone with pedestrian tastes in music... 2. Said miscreants go directly to jail. 3....? 4. Err...damn, I don't see where the profit comes from:-)
The APSL is one thing, but as I am a scientist I was intrigued by their claims for this as a distro for scientific applications. When I checked the page, all they actually don't seem to be offering anything more radical than the trusty
No, he's very clearly giving credit exactly where it's due: to Dennis Ritchie. He says he just twisted DR's arm into getting the latter to write "The Book" with him.
Of course, you could also use two empty cans and a piece of string (or have I gone over the heads of the present generation of Gameboy and Nintendo junkies who have forgotten how to make up their own games?)
I remember when I was a teenager in the early 70s and I got my first radio. I was quite surprised to get a lot of morse signals while scanning frequencies for a signal. Seems there was still a use for it then; in retrospect, it seems unlikely that legitimate ham radio fans would have been allowed to use commercial frequencies (I seem to remember they used to have to get a licence, but that was in the Channel Islands and the UK).
Interesting. And people look at me strangely when I describe the 029 card-punch as my first interface with a computer. I don't remember anybody measuring my speed with one of those things, but I was content in my (probably supercilious) feeling of superiority over those who insisted on using card-punches with QWERTY keyboards...:-)
By the same token, with a lot of phones having Java now (at least my modestly-priced Motorola T720 does) it might be possible to set up a routine where a prerecorded voice spells out the letters. Not sure how I would go about setting it up, though, as it would presumably have to bypass the OS of the phone, and Java's not really my thing in any case.
It would save you from having to learn morse, anyway. I learned it when I was a kid and thought it was cool, but I've forgotten almost all of it now.
You have a point; but for once I have been able to read a Mozilla-related Slashdot thread for a whole 45 seconds before hitting the usual posts from the pro-Opera zealots. Maybe they were all asleep...
I don't personally hate Opera, but I've never been so taken with it that I would be tempted to pay for the adware-free version. And the banners in the "free" version take up far too much screen real-estate to make the latter worth keeping.
There are many bacteria (e.g. some species of Pseudomonad) which can feed on hydrocarbons and/or aromatics. That's why they filter aviation fuel before pumping it into aircraft. As for, err, human detritus, again that's quite do-able. That's how composting toilets work; you don't even have to breed up special bugs to do that.
I know that's funny, but it's also true. I find I can waste an awful lot of time reading and posting on Slashdot when I could and should be doing something more productive.
I think it's called procrastination, and I guess the original poster might want to ask himself *why* he's putting off work. If he is procrastinating, maybe he should take a look at his motivation.
For instance, did he choose his course of study, or was that done for him? Or maybe he might want to consider deferring university study for a year or two, go and do something else (not sit at home reading Slashdot) then go back to Uni when he's more committed.
I'm not going to argue (much) with most of your post, as we obviously have different perspectives on what we require from a computer. But you ask:
how many crashes on Windows-based machines can be blamed on poorly configured systems?
The answer is probably "most"; but as the interface to nuts-and-bolts of system resources in Windows is deliberately dumbed-down, it often means that when something is broken, it at worst breaks the whole system, or at least just stays broken but leaves you having to do a re-install to fix it. Whereas on any *nix box all the configuration files are repairable with just a text editor. And, of course, you can throw as many programs as you like into the mix without risking crashing the machine.
There's a simpler way round all this from the end-user's perspective. I have no requirement for cookies to exist beyond the current browsing session, so I just symlink my cookies file to/dev/null. On a winbloze box you can simulate this with Mozilla/Netscape by creating an empty directory called cookies.txt in the appropriate place. I've no idea what to do with IE, though, since I don't use it.
Obviously, you have to either close the browser or use a cookie manager to get rid of the cookies in memory, but still...
Hmmm. Seems to me that Apple is being unfair about this. My (uninformed) understanding of the iTunes thing is that the end-user pays Apple for the tune, and presumably Apple credit the appropriate emolument to whoever supposedly owns the digital rights to the tune. Right? Surely that is essentially no different from walking into a CD shop and buying a CD. You have paid for the CD or file, you can play it all day and all night (and probably annoy the hell out of your neighbours, but that's another matter) no matter whether you're in Washington or sitting on a raft in the middle of the Atlantic. Everybody has had their cut, and everybody's happy.
For the distributor to suddenly pull the plug on that and say you've got to pay again to use the same CD or file seems questionable from a legal point of view. IANAL (thank God), but I would be curious to know if this is defensible. Common sense and decency would suggest not, but it seems to me that DRM laws involve neither.
since i refuse to buy cds anymore, Im just gonna go buy a kazoo.
Live music is better: Bumper stickers should be issued" (Neil Young).
You don't have to stop buying CDs, though; there's heaps of good stuff out there in the second-hand market, and it's great for keeping musical horizons expanded.
And a real bonus is that the RIAA and the other freeloaders doesn't make a cent, and there's bugger all they can do about it.
Maybe you ought to go see your doctor; tell him you're suffering from atrophy of the humour gland. In case you don't get the message, I was joking, you moron.
I wonder how long it's going to take for members of the RIAA to realise that there is a growing number of people who are unilaterally refusing to buy any of the CDs they sell. Obviously, there are those who *only* play music they've downloaded via P2P or whatever, but many of us (OK, I) have found it to be more trouble than it's worth for more off-the-beaten-track recordings. Especially since the quality of the MP3s or oggs tends to leave much to be desired.
Anyway, getting back to my point, I know several people who keep a list of RIAA members and make a point of not buying their CDs.
Not sure about other "real programmers" (yes, I'm 40 years old, and old enough to know what a real programmer is:-)) but I can write buggy code much more quickly in assembler than in C...:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know about your machines, but a careful look at gtop on my two home systems (a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 and a 1 GHz Athlon) seem to indicate the main areas of contention tend to be fairly evenly divided between the motherboard and the CPU. Sure, we can measure CPU and disk drive activity independently of each other, but that usually doesn't tell us a lot. Often logjams can be reduced only by upgrading the motherboard.
Indeed, but there are risks inherent in this, in that any surface is going to be littered with DNA, whether it be from a suspect's fingerprints or from the hamburger that the cop put on the piece of paper before/after taking the prints... well, you get the message.
And yes, DNA can survive cooking. But with very small samples, even if you do amplify it by means of polymerase chain reaction techniques to something large enough to be analysed, anybody presenting this as evidence has to be pretty sure of himself.
I've seen pictures of some blots presented in court that should have been summarily thrown out, but were not due to the simple fact that the judge was a layman, not a molecular biologist.
[snip]We implemented a filter file for the proxy and traffic went from ~97% down to ~30% utilization.
That is exactly what I was talking about when I mentioned applying appropriate security and traffic measures. I fail to see any difference accruing to the user's choice of platform.
[snip]You go back to being a scientist and I'll go back to saving people like you from yourselves with your lack of understanding regarding the need for real security policy.
FYI, I spent 15 years as a systems programmer specialising in security before I jumped fields into biotech, so I believe I have a claim to know what I'm talking about :-) and IIRC just about every major Linux distribution I have come across is arguably more secure by default than Windows can be with a lot of tweaking from sysadmins.
Ultimately, though, security should be applied at the network level, particularly if, as you say, you can't trust your users.
In my case (I'm a scientist) I would be seriously inconvenienced if some pointy-headed bureaucratic fool came along and overwrote my Linux partitions with Windows, and my immediate reaction would be to take it up with his boss.
You seem to be operating on the premise that all staff are luddites, vandals or criminals and not to be trusted. I would have thought that, far from losing sleep over this, you should be pleased that this is one person who is not going to be passing out viruses via Lookout Express. In any base, as long as you implement sensible policies (firewalling, quotas or whatever you need to do) there is no reason why your network should not operate transparently without applying unnecessary restrictions.
How?
Who do they think they are kidding? The RIAA pretty much only publish mainstream stuff. I've just been looking at the CD labels I've bought over the last year, and none of them are RIAA members.
Maybe it's a conspiracy on the part of real musicians, let's see:
1. Prod RIAA into prosecuting anyone with pedestrian tastes in music... ...? :-)
2. Said miscreants go directly to jail.
3.
4. Err...damn, I don't see where the profit comes from
"VIM, Ghostscript, Gnumeric, LaTeX, PyMOL [...] Rasmol, gdFortran, LAM/MPI, AbiWord, GNUplot, and Raster3D"
...not much there to entice me away from Linux, methinks.
No, he's very clearly giving credit exactly where it's due: to Dennis Ritchie. He says he just twisted DR's arm into getting the latter to write "The Book" with him.
Of course, you could also use two empty cans and a piece of string (or have I gone over the heads of the present generation of Gameboy and Nintendo junkies who have forgotten how to make up their own games?)
I remember when I was a teenager in the early 70s and I got my first radio. I was quite surprised to get a lot of morse signals while scanning frequencies for a signal. Seems there was still a use for it then; in retrospect, it seems unlikely that legitimate ham radio fans would have been allowed to use commercial frequencies (I seem to remember they used to have to get a licence, but that was in the Channel Islands and the UK).
Interesting. And people look at me strangely when I describe the 029 card-punch as my first interface with a computer. I don't remember anybody measuring my speed with one of those things, but I was content in my (probably supercilious) feeling of superiority over those who insisted on using card-punches with QWERTY keyboards... :-)
It would save you from having to learn morse, anyway. I learned it when I was a kid and thought it was cool, but I've forgotten almost all of it now.
I don't personally hate Opera, but I've never been so taken with it that I would be tempted to pay for the adware-free version. And the banners in the "free" version take up far too much screen real-estate to make the latter worth keeping.
And who would want the damn thing to order another beer when you've had enough? Perhaps this guy should go and get a life (or at least a job).
There are many bacteria (e.g. some species of Pseudomonad) which can feed on hydrocarbons and/or aromatics. That's why they filter aviation fuel before pumping it into aircraft. As for, err, human detritus, again that's quite do-able. That's how composting toilets work; you don't even have to breed up special bugs to do that.
I think it's called procrastination, and I guess the original poster might want to ask himself *why* he's putting off work. If he is procrastinating, maybe he should take a look at his motivation.
For instance, did he choose his course of study, or was that done for him? Or maybe he might want to consider deferring university study for a year or two, go and do something else (not sit at home reading Slashdot) then go back to Uni when he's more committed.
how many crashes on Windows-based machines can be blamed on poorly configured systems?
The answer is probably "most"; but as the interface to nuts-and-bolts of system resources in Windows is deliberately dumbed-down, it often means that when something is broken, it at worst breaks the whole system, or at least just stays broken but leaves you having to do a re-install to fix it. Whereas on any *nix box all the configuration files are repairable with just a text editor. And, of course, you can throw as many programs as you like into the mix without risking crashing the machine.
Anybody seen that Max Headroom episode: Baby Grobags?
Obviously, you have to either close the browser or use a cookie manager to get rid of the cookies in memory, but still...
For the distributor to suddenly pull the plug on that and say you've got to pay again to use the same CD or file seems questionable from a legal point of view. IANAL (thank God), but I would be curious to know if this is defensible. Common sense and decency would suggest not, but it seems to me that DRM laws involve neither.
They aren't here in Australia, either. At least the cheapie but excellent Pioneer jobbie I bought the other week definitely isn't.
Live music is better: Bumper stickers should be issued" (Neil Young).
You don't have to stop buying CDs, though; there's heaps of good stuff out there in the second-hand market, and it's great for keeping musical horizons expanded.
And a real bonus is that the RIAA and the other freeloaders doesn't make a cent, and there's bugger all they can do about it.
D'oh...
Anyway, getting back to my point, I know several people who keep a list of RIAA members and make a point of not buying their CDs.
Not sure about other "real programmers" (yes, I'm 40 years old, and old enough to know what a real programmer is :-)) but I can write buggy code much more quickly in assembler than in C... :-)