For those systems that are on all the time, select one system to be a common server, I personally recomend a Linux box, though xBSD or OSX may provide the features you need as well.
In your home directory, create a folder you are going to put your mount points in to mount the data stores you need.
On all the other systems, create a share that will contain the data you want to access "anywhere". On the central server Mount all of these shares in that sharesmount folder. This may be nfs or cifs as the architecture of the servers dictates.
As this is all mounted to your home directory, you can go to just about any system in the network and remotely mount all of your folders by Mounting your home folder from your primary server.
To remotely access this storage center, use either nfs over ssh, or build appropriate links into your web pages, and run a secure varient of apache.
I also recomend keeping your work data in a seprate storage area from your personal/home data. You may recall that Northwest Airlines successfully sued to get the personal computers of Flight Attendants who they believed co-operatively negotiated a sick-out strike. Keeping your personal data completely separate would reduce the likelyhood of loosing your entire computer setup if someone at work files a complaint that they believe you are doing something wrong.
There are other advantages to this kind of a setup. By centralizing your data storage tree, it is easier to perform backups, you will only need to backup the one server's home directory, tracing into the peripheral servers. If you wish to set up a thin client in a bedroom, or someplace where you don't want to have a lot of fans going, this gives you a platform ready made for your storage needs, as well as a reasonable terminal server. I think you get the idea.
-Rusty
Sales in the wrong direction...
on
Debian And WineX
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· Score: 1
First of all an observation, selling a product like WineX to the end user is a bit odd in my opinion.
Granted, these are the only people who right now can make use of the product, but they are still the wrong people to sell it to.
They should be selling this to the game companies, with either a per library install, or per linux install payment program.
This takes care of two birds at once. The game developer gets to expand his market, and under the presumption that the Wine installler works well nder Linux, the applications should generate a better review from the users. (increasing sales of the game, giving the company more money.
This also helps to resolve another end user issue that will continue to haunt the linux package/disribution systems. As more people move to Linux, or even start out using Linux, Just because one edition of WineX works well with QuakeII, does not provide any assurance that Diablo will run at all.
If WineX came with the game, you may find that you get an older version at times, but you will at least know that the game will work. Older versions should be handled better on Linux than on Windows, because the installers on Linux tend to check dependencies and conflicts a litle better.
Then again, that's just my opinion, You could be wrong.
Is there a definition of weapon? These things are not only non-lethal, but not harmful in the sense that they don't even cause pain
I suppose you could could get one from a dicionary websie...
As a working definition, a weapon is a tool that is used to either hurt someone, or prevent someone from doing the job expected of them. By this definition, we include legal injunctions, on up through Atomic bombs.
There are a couple of additional potential neat features available here.
If the car has a router built in, and participates in a network, the need for a hard disk in the car decreases dramatically. The example of map data needing to be "in the car" can be countered by having the map data on servers distributed in the area the map data is applicable to. Gas stations, motels, resturants, and so on all want people to visit them.
Get them to put in a server on site with local maps, and they can include their own ad space for their business (at a small additional cost...)
One very specific advantage over carry along map data is regional updates. Road construction, detours, etc, can be locally administered.
As long as you are part of a network, why not pull down a couple of hours of MP3's from your home server? 128M flash is relatively cheap, and getting cheaper. That's an easy two hours there. Most of the US is within a two hour drive of another probable network access, where you can start bringing down more music.
Why force the kids to watch some movie in the back seat. Set up a flat panel LCD on the back of each front seat, give the kids a couple of game controllers, and have them play car wars, or grand theft auto on the freeway and in the streets around you. As the car you are in is known to the router, it becomes the car that the kids are basing their firepower or driving skills from. Additionally the car and the router could be talking, and the actual performance capabilities of the car _at the moment_ could restrict the driving characteristics of the car being driven by the kids.
If you tell the car ahead of time what your destination is, it can check ahead for road conditions for you, and set up trigger points along the way, on the off chance the car breaks down along the way.
As with other security systems described earlier, this car could send you a sms message on a pager or cell phone, if it has been stollen, and could possibly "break down" next to some police for you. Undoubtably there people will mount web cams to the rear view mirrors which will be able to take pictures of the car thief.
Of course if you are borrowing the Beamer from dad to take your girlfriend to the movies, Dad will probably find out if you instead use it to do a Bonzai run.
You took that out of context. The abreviation of the text would have read Gecko on it's own does not have a tabbed interface. Gecko can render a tabbed interface, however the interface to Gecko is the configuration files and the application that uses Gecko. Gecko is a Rendering engine.
Yes, through Mozilla, Galeon and now Netscape7PR1 , Gecko does present a tabbed interface. However the Tabbed interface is for Mozilla, Galeon or Netscape, not Gecko.
Not aware of it being in IE, though I am not running the newest IE.
As Gecko is the html page rendering engine for Mozilla, and Galeon, it on it's own does not have a tabbed interface.
However as just about every aspect of the latest Mozilla and Netscape browsers, from the navigation buttons on down, and possibly up through the frame rendering for the browser itself (the beveled edges on in?) are rendered by Gecko, you could say that it is a feature of Gecko I suppose.
I suppose it depends upon how you interpret things.
from what I understand, is derivitave works. The works of Motzart, Bethoven, and Shakespear, are all in the public domain. This means that all of their works are "fair game" when developing your own creative works.
If you like the base key changes in a work by Motzart, or Bethoven, you are welcome to use it. Unless someone since then has used that same combination of key changes, and their music is not in the public domain.
We have not seen quite the same situation in written works. Authors regularly steal story concepts from other books, file off the serial numbers, wrap them with new characters and locations, and publish it as a new story.
While I sympathize with musicians who cringe at the thought of finding some other musician taking their song and changing one or two words and re-publishing it. In writing, that would be plagerism.
On the other hand, if the creator of some work does not release the work to the public domain at some time, it will stifle creativity.
I think that Spider Robinson pointed out the problem best, though I do not remember the story or the book I found it in. When musicians can't publish the music they create, because it contains "substantialy similar" parts, we will see a greater loss to society than just about any loss due to war.
Then again, that's just my opinion. I can be wrong.
While I am no fan of Microsoft, and never really considered "RealNames" a viable business, I think that RealNames jumping onto the anti-Microsoft bandwagon is about as sensible as if Borland were to have done the same thing.
My problem with the RealNames model is that there are litterally dozens of instances of some names. In the work that I do, the Acronym ATM has two distinct meanings. In the past five years I have run into two instances where SME did not stand for Subject Matter Expert.
Kraft has one meaning at the moment, however Craft has two distinct meanings (ability to shape things, and vehicle).
My own website's name can have two different meanings, and I am moving from one to another.
My feeling is that "RealNames" was in the auction dns buisness. They would sell "names" to the highest bidder, and the price could go up every time the name came up for renewal.
If that is a "viable" buisness model that they presented to their ventur capitalists, I can see why the money dried up. The VCs would wise up once they figured out the problem with the model.
To blame this on Microsoft is inviting the wrath of your customers. You were attempting to hold a proverbial gun to their heads.
This does not make Microsoft "right" any more than the village drunk blaming the village idiot for the village drunk's drinking, absolves the village idiot of any idiocy.
-Rusty
Re:Neither 2600 nor the EFF have skin in this game
on
2600 Appeal Rejected
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· Score: 5, Interesting
In contrast let's face it, neither 2600 nor EFF are threatened with nonexistence should they lose this case.
While this is not strictly about whether or not 2600, or EFF's existance is threatened, there is a prospective problem that has been raised by the case and the judgement.
The original story that 2600 carried was about how the author of a piece of software was being hassled by the legal system in his country. As the author had made public the software he had created, 2600 collected copies of the software and source code, and made them available on their website. Subsequently 2600 was enjoined through the courts by the MPAA to pull the software and source code from their web site. At that time 2600 published links to other web sites where the software was posted. These links were provided by readers of 2600 for the most part. In some cases the links were directly to the software, in other cases the links were to web pages where the software could be found. The appeal that has been lost at this time is 2600's appeal to be able to continue the practice of linking to other people's web sites with respect to the DeCSS software. After the Kaplan ruling 2600 posted a copy of the ruling, and advised readers that while they were not able to provide links to sites hosting DeCSS information, any interested parties could easily call find hundreds of such sites by typing DeCSS into the "GoTO" search engine, which is hosted by Disney, one of the petitioners in the case. So the judgement can be interpreted to read that the petitioners can tell you where to find this software, but the defendent is not allowed the same privledge.
I am aware that a lot of people are commenting that the DeCSS.exe program is a Windows program, so obviously it has nothing to do with Linux. In any effort to put together a tool for Linux, the author of parts of that tool, or package, needs to verify that the algorythims work. At the time the developer of DeCSS came up with the code that was ready to be tested, there was no way to read a DVD disk in Linux. (I may be wrong here, however this has been my interpretation of the arguments presented.) At the same time, DVD disks could be accessed in the Windows environment. The author did the logical thing, he compiled his algorythems into a Windows executable, with the necessary front end, and tested. It is this software that has been made available, and is found in the DeCSS.exe package.
On top of that, I have a hard time believing that the program would not run under Wine without any re-compiling, though I have not tested it.
The potential big problem this presents for the press is that Kaplan has set the precedent that if some media conglomerant decides that a story is detrimental to their situation, they can petition the courts to tell the periodical hosting that story how to present the relevant parts of the story. Theoretically if someone on/. finds out that there is a picture of one of the heads of the MPAA in a comprimizing situation, the MPAA can petition the courts to have/. rephrase the story so that it could read there is a picture of Mr. V in some compromising situation out on the internet now. Go to Google and serach for "mr. v compromising". and point back to the 2600 case as the precedent, and it will have been upheald by the Supreme Court.
Find people in your company who use Linux at home. Some of the tech people probably do, but you may be surprised and find a few of the general users who do as well. I would not put the probability as high, but if they exist, they are probably your best resource for the next step.
Find out what features of your existing environment already exist in an environment supported by Linux. Presuming you have a help desk group of your own, there are a couple of trouble ticketing platforms that are already running in Linux, some with fairly advanced features.
More important would be to find out what user documents and document types need to be supported.
Next would be to start migrating the back end systems to Linux. Linux works well as a replacement for e-mail servers and File Servers (Samba) There are people working on tools to provide the necessary support to completely replace Exchange for your Outlook users.
If you do a substantial amount of work with SQL server, you may need to look for support to migrate to another database server platform. Postgres comes to mind, however if it is not up to your needs, you may have to look to other options such as Oracle or DB2, both of which are available on Linux. There are licencing concerns with those as well.
Going back to those users who have some experience with Linux, get them a new workstation set up to run Linux, using available equivalent applications in the Linux environment to allow them to do as much of their day to day work as possible. This does not necesarily require adding a computer or monitor at their workstation, it is possible to use VNC on Windows to control a set of workstations in a server room that are running Linux. When they are comfortable with Linux as their prefered platform, the workstations can be reversed with the users desktop workstation being swapped for the Server room workstation. At that point run the Windows workstation with a VNC server so the user can still access Windows for those situations where it is still necessary.
Once the user has spent enough time in the Linux environment, start checking with them to find out what is still being used on the Windows platform, and determine if there is a way to run those applications in Linux, either natively, or through Wine. If it is an application built in house, work with the developers to port it to Linux as possible.
Once a department user or two are comfortable using the Linux platform without any need for Windows, preferably for over 3 months, but with an accelerated schedule this could be as little as a month, set up a schedule to roll the solution out to the rest of the department.
For the next year or two retain the Windows workstations in the server room running VNC. These will act as resources for a few people in a few situations. As they are used, find out what their uses are, and when possible find ways to do the same tasks in Linux. In some cases, all that will be required is additional training. Other cases may need further product development.
Once you are satisfied that the Windows Workstations are no longer needed, convert them to a Linux Beowolf Cluster or other cluster server and start using it for any minor to low precedence major number crunching as needed.
Your toughest nut to crack will probably be managers and department heads. They are most likely to have non-standard hardware (laptops, where everyone else has desktops) need additional support (remote access) and have the least amount of time to learn new tools. If you can get their buy in first, and get them migrated to Linux before you convert their departments, they will be much less likely to do things like sending e-mails that have Windows required features in them, undermining your efforts with their subordinates.
All of this and more should be part of a project plan before you start any of the work. Granted parts can be spun off and done before other parts, the back end conversion being the prime example. Remote access should not be a significant issue either. There are several VPN solutions including support for Microsoft DUN-pptp.
For business case examples, and examples of companies that have done these types of conversions, take a look at the home pages of the various well known distributions. Mandrake includes a link to business cases for customers of theirs who have made, or are making the conversion.
The longer that you put off conversion to a lower cost, open platform, the longer it will take, and the more expensive it will be.
You can also look to companies like IBM, for support for such a conversion. I do not know how much they will cost you, but it may be worth investigating.
Possibly the easiest way to get accounts canceled
on
Disconnecting
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· Score: 1
is to start at your new account and complain to the old ISP's that the user-id (your old user-id) is sending you spam.
As that activity violates most user agreements, most ISP's will act fairly rappidly.
-Rusty
Re:What are you so scared of?
on
USB Remote Control
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· Score: 3, Insightful
It is not necesarily the collection of "anonymous, aggregate" viewing statistics that is the problem. I have no particular interest in becoming a Neilson family member.
Coupons for products I have no interst in at the moment, and often even for products I may very well be interested in, go directly to the trash.
The major problem is that I feel fairly strongly that what I do in my house, is really of no one elses business. There are potential exceptions, however it requires a warrent to collect evidence of crimes committed, and a warrent requires "reasonable suspicion" to be presented to a judge.
If I feel it important that advertizers know who I am, and what interests me, so that they can better target ads that are of interest to me, I will be more than happy to tell them. However I have seen nothing to provide any evidence that any survey that marketing has performed has led to better targeting of advertizements.
Then again, I accept that I can be wrong, and you may have better information. If so, I would be happy for you to provide some indication that a survey that you have participated in has provided you with a reduction in the amount of Junk mail, or Spam that you have recieved.
Sorry, but this is another remote with poor design in my opinion.
The best remote I have seen was on the VideoGuide system. A central joystick, an independent rocker panel around the joystick, a button above the rocker panel and a button below it, with an index finger button on the underside (protected from accidental pressing by the sculpting of the remote.)
This should work with a set-top box with an ethernet, usb-b and as available jeni and upnp interfaces. Consumer devices with these interfaces would plug in, solving the "what state is the device in?" question. Additionally, the consumer devices would provide a software faceplate interface that the remote base station would use to provide an on-screen interface for the user to control.
If this were integrated into a A/V Reciever, the reciever could figure out what device was plugged into what port on the reciever and handle just about all of the setup for you. Otherwise you would have to tell the set-top box how your system was wired together.
Then again, that's just my opinion, your ideal is probably different.
Except that Microsoft could afford to pay up the fine AND face any huge lawsuits by sheer muscle power. As would Sun. Or for that matter any of the bigger companies. It would mean nothing to them, and people would still continue to buy their stuff.
The resolution to this is to base the fine on per copy retail pricing. If Microsoft Shop (a theoretical planning package allowing you to plan and cost out building projects ranging from making a one legged stool through re-fitting your garage or basement as a manufacturing center) costs $79 per copy retail, and it unwittingly notifies your local zoning office that you plan on setting up a mass distribution center running out of your garage, Microsoft should be fined $79 per copy of Microsoft Shop sold.
As Microsoft is not the recipient of all of the $79 per copy, they would be paying above and beyond their profit for the product.
Personally I think this should be based upon the Suggested Retail Price at the time the product is released. So if a major software flaw is found in X-Box, they would be liable for the $299 per device, not the current or upcomming $199 per device.
Punative damages should be awarded based upon actual costs to consumers for the losses accumulated by the software. If the theoretical problem with Microsoft Shop ultimately cost you $1500 in legal bills to defend the fact that you did not implement the project that you played around with, that cost would be a added as punative damages to any class action suit.
But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
As a side effect, Free software (as in beer) would have significantly lower cost per failure. Unfortunately with the potential for punative damages as part of a class action suit, this would have a deletorious effect on poorly managed Open Source/Free software.
First, financially, this does not make sense for RoadRunner. Assuming that they are a publicly traded company, which may not be the case, one of the items on their balance sheet is "Customer Good Will". This contributes to the bottom line, and reflects the customer's opinion on the value the company has. Part of the reason for this line item is that your customers are the best advertising you could possibly have. A thousand customers telling others "I use RoadRunner, and I like it." is far more effective for bringing in customers from other ISPs than any cartoon figure on a billboard.
Upsetting your customers by arbitrarily altring things the customer has set up is not good for your buisness. It will show up in the press when some upset customer discovers the situation, and people who are not customers will start asking customer "Why do you use a service that co-opts your creation?"
Except in rare instances, the machine where the message is created, is not the RoadRunner server. The machine where the message was created is the machine that the Organization header is designed to help identify. UseNet pre-dates the Internet and NNTP. Very early users may have had what is called a Bang path. The Bang Path was a list of UUCP hosts that had handled the article. If you were a student or taught at a university, and you posted to UseNet, your article may cross over several different gateways on it's way to some reader. Attempting to identify where the message came from via the path information was often quite difficult. As a result the "Organization" header was created. If you worked off of a VAX box, or other timeshare type system, your system administrator would set the Organization header for you, and it would reflect the University you were at.
Likewise if you are working for XYZ.Corp, your Organization header should reflect that. It is not advertizing for your company, it simply reflects that the machine you posted from is company property.
Home users present a different situation, in that most people do not run businesses from their homes, though they very well could. As a result, the "Organization" header is a bit less meaningful. In fact it is not unusual for people to put things like "Organization: Lost!" or "Organization: Chaos" as their Organization header. This does nothing to identify the host machine, but does say something about the poster.
In any case, RR does not appear to have universally made this change. Frome earlier posts I gather that there is at least one city that does not yet do this. That may have been an oversight on RR's part, or they may have set it up that way so that when it becomes overwellmed with postings they can see the error in their ways.
I am not sure about the issue of what happens when you run a NNTP server of your own. cnews is considered a server, yet from what I read articles originating on a cnews connected host appear to be having their Organization header co-opted as well. I am not sure if this behaviour extends to other NNTP capable servers as well.
Going to an outside host for your UseNet News is always an option. It may not be an easy option, you may have to set up a UUCP host to host process to do so, but it can be done.
The legality of using a copyrighten work to create a parody of the work has withstood trial attacks. It does not relly upon the creator allowing the work to be used.
The problem here is that neither the lyrics nor the background music belong to the person performing the work, or making it available. I do not think that this would fall into the catagory of parody, so I doubt that such a defense would stand up to trial.
The HP Way, as I understand it was to give the employees of the company a free hand in deciding what products needed to be developed, and what parts were needed for those products. From the equipment they initially built and sold to the Walt Disney company, through their decision to let "The Woz" take his computer design with him as he left the company, they showed an interest in those products that they believed would be profitable, and letting engineers have a free hand to do what they wished, including leaving for greener pastures.
While I am not sure that the new company will exhibit the same "Way", I do not see anything preventing new startups from using this method of operations.
As I understand it, parts of this "Way" have been used in other companies. There has been much talk of the "Apple Way" which encourages people to try new things.
We may never see another large company that works the way HP did. If so, I think the world will be a poorer place. On the other hand, as companies are looking into more and more Open Source projects, I suspect that the philosophy of Open Source will propigate into other parts of corporate operations.
For people who's lives are not directly impacted by the stories that are reported, I don't see a problem with re-writes of stories. On the other hand, almost every story has a direct impact on someone.
Let's say that a writer for WSJ reports that Cisco has done major cuts to it's overhead in a story three days ago. If you invest in Cisco, this would peque your interest. You might even realize that the primary way companies have cut overhead is to get rid of either part of their development team, or part of their support team. Either solution may provide you the impetus to sell part of your stock, as they both lead you to the conclusion that they have made a short term profit decision that will negatively impact long term results.
A day later Cisco reports a major increase in profits as a result of their decision to cut overhead. The stock jumps 18% the next day.
You decide to go take a look at the story again, and find that now the URL returns a story by a different author with glowing reports of the profitability of the company.
If you sold your stock before the quarterly results posted, you took a major hit on the potential for your earnings for the stock. The new story does not support your decision. The decision to sell was yours, but it was guided by a story that you can't find anymore, and because of the newspaper's guidelines stating that it is ok to "revise without notification" stories on-line, you are left holding the bag, and even more skeptical of what you read online.
There are only two possible solutions to this that I can see. Either the online newspapers take responsibility and provide notification to the readers that the stories they may be relying upon have been updated, or some tool needs to be developed that will allow a user to flag stories for monitoring that will notify them if the story has been updated.
Unfortunately either will impact the newspaper's bandwidth.
Then again, I don't own stock in Cisco, (though I should get some) so at the moment such a story would not directly impact me.
Slashdot Mirror
For those systems that are on all the time, select one system to be a common server, I personally recomend a Linux box, though xBSD or OSX may provide the features you need as well.
In your home directory, create a folder you are going to put your mount points in to mount the data stores you need.
On all the other systems, create a share that will contain the data you want to access "anywhere". On the central server Mount all of these shares in that sharesmount folder. This may be nfs or cifs as the architecture of the servers dictates.
As this is all mounted to your home directory, you can go to just about any system in the network and remotely mount all of your folders by Mounting your home folder from your primary server.
To remotely access this storage center, use either nfs over ssh, or build appropriate links into your web pages, and run a secure varient of apache.
I also recomend keeping your work data in a seprate storage area from your personal/home data. You may recall that Northwest Airlines successfully sued to get the personal computers of Flight Attendants who they believed co-operatively negotiated a sick-out strike. Keeping your personal data completely separate would reduce the likelyhood of loosing your entire computer setup if someone at work files a complaint that they believe you are doing something wrong.
There are other advantages to this kind of a setup. By centralizing your data storage tree, it is easier to perform backups, you will only need to backup the one server's home directory, tracing into the peripheral servers. If you wish to set up a thin client in a bedroom, or someplace where you don't want to have a lot of fans going, this gives you a platform ready made for your storage needs, as well as a reasonable terminal server. I think you get the idea.
-Rusty
First of all an observation, selling a product like WineX to the end user is a bit odd in my opinion.
Granted, these are the only people who right now can make use of the product, but they are still the wrong people to sell it to.
They should be selling this to the game companies, with either a per library install, or per linux install payment program.
This takes care of two birds at once. The game developer gets to expand his market, and under the presumption that the Wine installler works well nder Linux, the applications should generate a better review from the users. (increasing sales of the game, giving the company more money.
This also helps to resolve another end user issue that will continue to haunt the linux package/disribution systems. As more people move to Linux, or even start out using Linux, Just because one edition of WineX works well with QuakeII, does not provide any assurance that Diablo will run at all.
If WineX came with the game, you may find that you get an older version at times, but you will at least know that the game will work. Older versions should be handled better on Linux than on Windows, because the installers on Linux tend to check dependencies and conflicts a litle better.
Then again, that's just my opinion, You could be wrong.
-Rusty
Is there a definition of weapon? These things are not only non-lethal, but not harmful in the sense that they don't even cause pain
I suppose you could could get one from a dicionary websie...
As a working definition, a weapon is a tool that is used to either hurt someone, or prevent someone from doing the job expected of them. By this definition, we include legal injunctions, on up through Atomic bombs.
Then again, there might be a better definition.
-Rusty
There are a couple of additional potential neat features available here.
If the car has a router built in, and participates in a network, the need for a hard disk in the car decreases dramatically. The example of map data needing to be "in the car" can be countered by having the map data on servers distributed in the area the map data is applicable to. Gas stations, motels, resturants, and so on all want people to visit them.
Get them to put in a server on site with local maps, and they can include their own ad space for their business (at a small additional cost...)
One very specific advantage over carry along map data is regional updates. Road construction, detours, etc, can be locally administered.
As long as you are part of a network, why not pull down a couple of hours of MP3's from your home server? 128M flash is relatively cheap, and getting cheaper. That's an easy two hours there. Most of the US is within a two hour drive of another probable network access, where you can start bringing down more music.
Why force the kids to watch some movie in the back seat. Set up a flat panel LCD on the back of each front seat, give the kids a couple of game controllers, and have them play car wars, or grand theft auto on the freeway and in the streets around you. As the car you are in is known to the router, it becomes the car that the kids are basing their firepower or driving skills from. Additionally the car and the router could be talking, and the actual performance capabilities of the car _at the moment_ could restrict the driving characteristics of the car being driven by the kids.
If you tell the car ahead of time what your destination is, it can check ahead for road conditions for you, and set up trigger points along the way, on the off chance the car breaks down along the way.
As with other security systems described earlier, this car could send you a sms message on a pager or cell phone, if it has been stollen, and could possibly "break down" next to some police for you. Undoubtably there people will mount web cams to the rear view mirrors which will be able to take pictures of the car thief.
Of course if you are borrowing the Beamer from dad to take your girlfriend to the movies, Dad will probably find out if you instead use it to do a Bonzai run.
-Rusty
Even worse...
Telecommuting.
Perhaps they are too busy focusing on known security problems? (sorry, I know, flamebait.)
-Rusty
You took that out of context. The abreviation of the text would have read Gecko on it's own does not have a tabbed interface. Gecko can render a tabbed interface, however the interface to Gecko is the configuration files and the application that uses Gecko. Gecko is a Rendering engine.
Yes, through Mozilla, Galeon and now Netscape7PR1 , Gecko does present a tabbed interface. However the Tabbed interface is for Mozilla, Galeon or Netscape, not Gecko.
Opera is in a world of it's own....
-Rusty
I don't think so....
More like Netscape is to Mozilla as Star Office is to OpenOffice.
IE is a Microsoft product which does not use Gecko in any way that I know of...
-Rusty
Not aware of it being in IE, though I am not running the newest IE.
As Gecko is the html page rendering engine for Mozilla, and Galeon, it on it's own does not have a tabbed interface.
However as just about every aspect of the latest Mozilla and Netscape browsers, from the navigation buttons on down, and possibly up through the frame rendering for the browser itself (the beveled edges on in?) are rendered by Gecko, you could say that it is a feature of Gecko I suppose.
I suppose it depends upon how you interpret things.
-Rusty
figured they wouldn't come back and beat me up over it, Spider might though... ;-)
Sorry about that...
-Rusty
I can just see the pop-up now..
Your fingerprint has expired. Please enter a new finger print:
[scan]
Fingerprint too similar to previous entry. Please enter a new finger print:...
Also there has been some hacking of finger print scanners published lately, see this article.
from what I understand, is derivitave works. The works of Motzart, Bethoven, and Shakespear, are all in the public domain. This means that all of their works are "fair game" when developing your own creative works.
If you like the base key changes in a work by Motzart, or Bethoven, you are welcome to use it. Unless someone since then has used that same combination of key changes, and their music is not in the public domain.
We have not seen quite the same situation in written works. Authors regularly steal story concepts from other books, file off the serial numbers, wrap them with new characters and locations, and publish it as a new story.
While I sympathize with musicians who cringe at the thought of finding some other musician taking their song and changing one or two words and re-publishing it. In writing, that would be plagerism.
On the other hand, if the creator of some work does not release the work to the public domain at some time, it will stifle creativity.
I think that Spider Robinson pointed out the problem best, though I do not remember the story or the book I found it in. When musicians can't publish the music they create, because it contains "substantialy similar" parts, we will see a greater loss to society than just about any loss due to war.
Then again, that's just my opinion. I can be wrong.
-Rusty
While I am no fan of Microsoft, and never really considered "RealNames" a viable business, I think that RealNames jumping onto the anti-Microsoft bandwagon is about as sensible as if Borland were to have done the same thing.
My problem with the RealNames model is that there are litterally dozens of instances of some names. In the work that I do, the Acronym ATM has two distinct meanings. In the past five years I have run into two instances where SME did not stand for Subject Matter Expert.
Kraft has one meaning at the moment, however Craft has two distinct meanings (ability to shape things, and vehicle).
My own website's name can have two different meanings, and I am moving from one to another.
My feeling is that "RealNames" was in the auction dns buisness. They would sell "names" to the highest bidder, and the price could go up every time the name came up for renewal.
If that is a "viable" buisness model that they presented to their ventur capitalists, I can see why the money dried up. The VCs would wise up once they figured out the problem with the model.
To blame this on Microsoft is inviting the wrath of your customers. You were attempting to hold a proverbial gun to their heads.
This does not make Microsoft "right" any more than the village drunk blaming the village idiot for the village drunk's drinking, absolves the village idiot of any idiocy.
-Rusty
In contrast let's face it, neither 2600 nor EFF are threatened with nonexistence should they lose this case.
/. finds out that there is a picture of one of the heads of the MPAA in a comprimizing situation, the MPAA can petition the courts to have /. rephrase the story so that it could read there is a picture of Mr. V in some compromising situation out on the internet now. Go to Google and serach for "mr. v compromising". and point back to the 2600 case as the precedent, and it will have been upheald by the Supreme Court.
While this is not strictly about whether or not 2600, or EFF's existance is threatened, there is a prospective problem that has been raised by the case and the judgement.
The original story that 2600 carried was about how the author of a piece of software was being hassled by the legal system in his country. As the author had made public the software he had created, 2600 collected copies of the software and source code, and made them available on their website. Subsequently 2600 was enjoined through the courts by the MPAA to pull the software and source code from their web site. At that time 2600 published links to other web sites where the software was posted. These links were provided by readers of 2600 for the most part. In some cases the links were directly to the software, in other cases the links were to web pages where the software could be found. The appeal that has been lost at this time is 2600's appeal to be able to continue the practice of linking to other people's web sites with respect to the DeCSS software. After the Kaplan ruling 2600 posted a copy of the ruling, and advised readers that while they were not able to provide links to sites hosting DeCSS information, any interested parties could easily call find hundreds of such sites by typing DeCSS into the "GoTO" search engine, which is hosted by Disney, one of the petitioners in the case. So the judgement can be interpreted to read that the petitioners can tell you where to find this software, but the defendent is not allowed the same privledge.
I am aware that a lot of people are commenting that the DeCSS.exe program is a Windows program, so obviously it has nothing to do with Linux. In any effort to put together a tool for Linux, the author of parts of that tool, or package, needs to verify that the algorythims work. At the time the developer of DeCSS came up with the code that was ready to be tested, there was no way to read a DVD disk in Linux. (I may be wrong here, however this has been my interpretation of the arguments presented.) At the same time, DVD disks could be accessed in the Windows environment. The author did the logical thing, he compiled his algorythems into a Windows executable, with the necessary front end, and tested. It is this software that has been made available, and is found in the DeCSS.exe package.
On top of that, I have a hard time believing that the program would not run under Wine without any re-compiling, though I have not tested it.
The potential big problem this presents for the press is that Kaplan has set the precedent that if some media conglomerant decides that a story is detrimental to their situation, they can petition the courts to tell the periodical hosting that story how to present the relevant parts of the story. Theoretically if someone on
Then again, IANAL, I could be wrong.
-Rusty
Find people in your company who use Linux at home. Some of the tech people probably do, but you may be surprised and find a few of the general users who do as well. I would not put the probability as high, but if they exist, they are probably your best resource for the next step.
Find out what features of your existing environment already exist in an environment supported by Linux. Presuming you have a help desk group of your own, there are a couple of trouble ticketing platforms that are already running in Linux, some with fairly advanced features.
More important would be to find out what user documents and document types need to be supported.
Next would be to start migrating the back end systems to Linux. Linux works well as a replacement for e-mail servers and File Servers (Samba) There are people working on tools to provide the necessary support to completely replace Exchange for your Outlook users.
If you do a substantial amount of work with SQL server, you may need to look for support to migrate to another database server platform. Postgres comes to mind, however if it is not up to your needs, you may have to look to other options such as Oracle or DB2, both of which are available on Linux. There are licencing concerns with those as well.
Going back to those users who have some experience with Linux, get them a new workstation set up to run Linux, using available equivalent applications in the Linux environment to allow them to do as much of their day to day work as possible. This does not necesarily require adding a computer or monitor at their workstation, it is possible to use VNC on Windows to control a set of workstations in a server room that are running Linux. When they are comfortable with Linux as their prefered platform, the workstations can be reversed with the users desktop workstation being swapped for the Server room workstation. At that point run the Windows workstation with a VNC server so the user can still access Windows for those situations where it is still necessary.
Once the user has spent enough time in the Linux environment, start checking with them to find out what is still being used on the Windows platform, and determine if there is a way to run those applications in Linux, either natively, or through Wine. If it is an application built in house, work with the developers to port it to Linux as possible.
Once a department user or two are comfortable using the Linux platform without any need for Windows, preferably for over 3 months, but with an accelerated schedule this could be as little as a month, set up a schedule to roll the solution out to the rest of the department.
For the next year or two retain the Windows workstations in the server room running VNC. These will act as resources for a few people in a few situations. As they are used, find out what their uses are, and when possible find ways to do the same tasks in Linux. In some cases, all that will be required is additional training. Other cases may need further product development.
Once you are satisfied that the Windows Workstations are no longer needed, convert them to a Linux Beowolf Cluster or other cluster server and start using it for any minor to low precedence major number crunching as needed.
Your toughest nut to crack will probably be managers and department heads. They are most likely to have non-standard hardware (laptops, where everyone else has desktops) need additional support (remote access) and have the least amount of time to learn new tools. If you can get their buy in first, and get them migrated to Linux before you convert their departments, they will be much less likely to do things like sending e-mails that have Windows required features in them, undermining your efforts with their subordinates.
All of this and more should be part of a project plan before you start any of the work. Granted parts can be spun off and done before other parts, the back end conversion being the prime example. Remote access should not be a significant issue either. There are several VPN solutions including support for Microsoft DUN-pptp.
For business case examples, and examples of companies that have done these types of conversions, take a look at the home pages of the various well known distributions. Mandrake includes a link to business cases for customers of theirs who have made, or are making the conversion.
The longer that you put off conversion to a lower cost, open platform, the longer it will take, and the more expensive it will be.
You can also look to companies like IBM, for support for such a conversion. I do not know how much they will cost you, but it may be worth investigating.
-Rusty
this was all over News.com yesterday
is to start at your new account and complain to the old ISP's that the user-id (your old user-id) is sending you spam.
As that activity violates most user agreements, most ISP's will act fairly rappidly.
-Rusty
It is not necesarily the collection of "anonymous, aggregate" viewing statistics that is the problem. I have no particular interest in becoming a Neilson family member.
Coupons for products I have no interst in at the moment, and often even for products I may very well be interested in, go directly to the trash.
The major problem is that I feel fairly strongly that what I do in my house, is really of no one elses business. There are potential exceptions, however it requires a warrent to collect evidence of crimes committed, and a warrent requires "reasonable suspicion" to be presented to a judge.
If I feel it important that advertizers know who I am, and what interests me, so that they can better target ads that are of interest to me, I will be more than happy to tell them. However I have seen nothing to provide any evidence that any survey that marketing has performed has led to better targeting of advertizements.
Then again, I accept that I can be wrong, and you may have better information. If so, I would be happy for you to provide some indication that a survey that you have participated in has provided you with a reduction in the amount of Junk mail, or Spam that you have recieved.
-Rusty
Sorry, but this is another remote with poor design in my opinion.
The best remote I have seen was on the VideoGuide system. A central joystick, an independent rocker panel around the joystick, a button above the rocker panel and a button below it, with an index finger button on the underside (protected from accidental pressing by the sculpting of the remote.)
This should work with a set-top box with an ethernet, usb-b and as available jeni and upnp interfaces. Consumer devices with these interfaces would plug in, solving the "what state is the device in?" question. Additionally, the consumer devices would provide a software faceplate interface that the remote base station would use to provide an on-screen interface for the user to control.
If this were integrated into a A/V Reciever, the reciever could figure out what device was plugged into what port on the reciever and handle just about all of the setup for you. Otherwise you would have to tell the set-top box how your system was wired together.
Then again, that's just my opinion, your ideal is probably different.
-Rusty
Except that Microsoft could afford to pay up the fine AND face any huge lawsuits by sheer muscle power. As would Sun. Or for that matter any of the bigger companies. It would mean nothing to them, and people would still continue to buy their stuff.
The resolution to this is to base the fine on per copy retail pricing. If Microsoft Shop (a theoretical planning package allowing you to plan and cost out building projects ranging from making a one legged stool through re-fitting your garage or basement as a manufacturing center) costs $79 per copy retail, and it unwittingly notifies your local zoning office that you plan on setting up a mass distribution center running out of your garage, Microsoft should be fined $79 per copy of Microsoft Shop sold.
As Microsoft is not the recipient of all of the $79 per copy, they would be paying above and beyond their profit for the product.
Personally I think this should be based upon the Suggested Retail Price at the time the product is released. So if a major software flaw is found in X-Box, they would be liable for the $299 per device, not the current or upcomming $199 per device.
Punative damages should be awarded based upon actual costs to consumers for the losses accumulated by the software. If the theoretical problem with Microsoft Shop ultimately cost you $1500 in legal bills to defend the fact that you did not implement the project that you played around with, that cost would be a added as punative damages to any class action suit.
But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
As a side effect, Free software (as in beer) would have significantly lower cost per failure. Unfortunately with the potential for punative damages as part of a class action suit, this would have a deletorious effect on poorly managed Open Source/Free software.
Bees sense polarization of light, As a result the sky is their map.
First, financially, this does not make sense for RoadRunner. Assuming that they are a publicly traded company, which may not be the case, one of the items on their balance sheet is "Customer Good Will". This contributes to the bottom line, and reflects the customer's opinion on the value the company has. Part of the reason for this line item is that your customers are the best advertising you could possibly have. A thousand customers telling others "I use RoadRunner, and I like it." is far more effective for bringing in customers from other ISPs than any cartoon figure on a billboard.
Upsetting your customers by arbitrarily altring things the customer has set up is not good for your buisness. It will show up in the press when some upset customer discovers the situation, and people who are not customers will start asking customer "Why do you use a service that co-opts your creation?"
Except in rare instances, the machine where the message is created, is not the RoadRunner server. The machine where the message was created is the machine that the Organization header is designed to help identify. UseNet pre-dates the Internet and NNTP. Very early users may have had what is called a Bang path. The Bang Path was a list of UUCP hosts that had handled the article. If you were a student or taught at a university, and you posted to UseNet, your article may cross over several different gateways on it's way to some reader. Attempting to identify where the message came from via the path information was often quite difficult. As a result the "Organization" header was created. If you worked off of a VAX box, or other timeshare type system, your system administrator would set the Organization header for you, and it would reflect the University you were at.
Likewise if you are working for XYZ.Corp, your Organization header should reflect that. It is not advertizing for your company, it simply reflects that the machine you posted from is company property.
Home users present a different situation, in that most people do not run businesses from their homes, though they very well could. As a result, the "Organization" header is a bit less meaningful. In fact it is not unusual for people to put things like "Organization: Lost!" or "Organization: Chaos" as their Organization header. This does nothing to identify the host machine, but does say something about the poster.
In any case, RR does not appear to have universally made this change. Frome earlier posts I gather that there is at least one city that does not yet do this. That may have been an oversight on RR's part, or they may have set it up that way so that when it becomes overwellmed with postings they can see the error in their ways.
I am not sure about the issue of what happens when you run a NNTP server of your own. cnews is considered a server, yet from what I read articles originating on a cnews connected host appear to be having their Organization header co-opted as well. I am not sure if this behaviour extends to other NNTP capable servers as well.
Going to an outside host for your UseNet News is always an option. It may not be an easy option, you may have to set up a UUCP host to host process to do so, but it can be done.
-Rusty
The legality of using a copyrighten work to create a parody of the work has withstood trial attacks. It does not relly upon the creator allowing the work to be used.
The problem here is that neither the lyrics nor the background music belong to the person performing the work, or making it available. I do not think that this would fall into the catagory of parody, so I doubt that such a defense would stand up to trial.
Then again, I could be wrong...
-Rusty
The HP Way, as I understand it was to give the employees of the company a free hand in deciding what products needed to be developed, and what parts were needed for those products. From the equipment they initially built and sold to the Walt Disney company, through their decision to let "The Woz" take his computer design with him as he left the company, they showed an interest in those products that they believed would be profitable, and letting engineers have a free hand to do what they wished, including leaving for greener pastures.
While I am not sure that the new company will exhibit the same "Way", I do not see anything preventing new startups from using this method of operations.
As I understand it, parts of this "Way" have been used in other companies. There has been much talk of the "Apple Way" which encourages people to try new things.
We may never see another large company that works the way HP did. If so, I think the world will be a poorer place. On the other hand, as companies are looking into more and more Open Source projects, I suspect that the philosophy of Open Source will propigate into other parts of corporate operations.
Then again, I could be wrong.
-Rusty
For people who's lives are not directly impacted by the stories that are reported, I don't see a problem with re-writes of stories. On the other hand, almost every story has a direct impact on someone.
Let's say that a writer for WSJ reports that Cisco has done major cuts to it's overhead in a story three days ago. If you invest in Cisco, this would peque your interest. You might even realize that the primary way companies have cut overhead is to get rid of either part of their development team, or part of their support team. Either solution may provide you the impetus to sell part of your stock, as they both lead you to the conclusion that they have made a short term profit decision that will negatively impact long term results.
A day later Cisco reports a major increase in profits as a result of their decision to cut overhead. The stock jumps 18% the next day.
You decide to go take a look at the story again, and find that now the URL returns a story by a different author with glowing reports of the profitability of the company.
If you sold your stock before the quarterly results posted, you took a major hit on the potential for your earnings for the stock. The new story does not support your decision. The decision to sell was yours, but it was guided by a story that you can't find anymore, and because of the newspaper's guidelines stating that it is ok to "revise without notification" stories on-line, you are left holding the bag, and even more skeptical of what you read online.
There are only two possible solutions to this that I can see. Either the online newspapers take responsibility and provide notification to the readers that the stories they may be relying upon have been updated, or some tool needs to be developed that will allow a user to flag stories for monitoring that will notify them if the story has been updated.
Unfortunately either will impact the newspaper's bandwidth.
Then again, I don't own stock in Cisco, (though I should get some) so at the moment such a story would not directly impact me.
-Rusty