government managers would rather hire an underqualified person with a security clearance and later train them in their tradecraft
What bullshit. Government managers want somebody with 10 years of Java experience to come and work for $35,000/year. Then, once you get in, they remove all incentive for you to advance by promising cushy benefits, annual COLAs, and best of all, job security. Here at NIH, it took almost two years for a grossly incompetent worker to be fired, simply becuase of the bureaucratic crap they had to wade through. There are techs here who let their NT 4 MCSE certifications lapse because our institute is primarily a Novell shop (although we use Exchange, we have no full-time Exchange admin); when I asked if they were planning to go for the upgrade to Win2K, they said "why bother? I don't need it" That's the kind of attitude they have here.
Then there's the condescending view all government employees have of contractors. That Dilbert cartoon a few months ago where the contractor is asked to bring his own air? It's not a joke.
I hate it here. As soon as I pass my Oracle certification tests, I'm out of here, and the federal government can kiss my fucking ass.
No new G4s, so the fastest Mac you can buy is a $3500 dual-800 MHz G4, and that's way more expensive than the $1800 800 Mhz G4 iMac, with virtually the same capabilities. Good one, Apple.
Probably interesting, but entirely too long to read. Its the holidays - I'm not in the mood for pages and pages of stuff about law, I'm in the mood for candy canes...
No problem. Here's the only part people like you need to read:
I am not optimistic, however. Those who get it (e.g., you) are pathetically apolitical. You're proud of your apathy. You're disgusted with people who try to persuade politicians. So am I. But while you do nothing, the future of creativity and innovation is sold in DC - typically to the highest, and most disgusting bidder.
where the config files are slightly different than on other unixes:
1. log in to Mac OS X as an admin user
2. navigate to the/Applications/Utilities folder and open Terminal
3. type sudo perl -i.bk -p -e 's/#Protocol 2,1/Protocol 2/g'/etc/sshd_config at the shell prompt and enter the admin user password when prompted
4. type sudo perl -i.bk -p -e 's/2,1/2/g'/etc/ssh_config 5. type grep SSH/etc/hostconfig to determine whether SSH is enabled on your machine
6. if the response is "YES", type sudo kill -HUP `cat/var/run/sshd.pid` to restart it
7. Quit the Terminal program
Note that he's scheduled to direct the feature-film adaptation of "The Prisoner" as well. God help fans of the original series.
He, Akiva Goldsman, and Nora Ephron should all be made part of the cast of the next "Survivor" series so that they can't do any more damage in Hollywood for at least a year or so.
It definitely is "ketchup-flavored." It has a weird taste to it.
It's a little sweeter than the standard stuff (as is the red ketchup in the similarly-shaped brightly-colored squeeze bottle; the original plastic bottle and the glass bottles are all the old recipie), and it's pumped full of vitamin C, so that's probably what you're tasting.
Hmmmm. This might actually represent a problem for Apple. Consider:
1. Their fastest processor is an 867 MHz G4.
2. Their fastest machine is a dual-800 MHz G4.
3. When the G5 is available, the slowest speed going to the desktop market according to the article is 1.2 GHz.
4. The rumor (unlikely as it sounds) is that there'll be an announcement at MacWorld Expo San Francisco of a G5-powered Mac.
Now, if you knew a machine that was 50% faster in clockspeed than the current model was just a month or two away, wouldn't you want to wait? I would. And that's pretty much the last thing Apple really needs at the mement.
Perhaps they should start with the slower speed models? Even an 800 MHz G5 should be faster than the current G4s, if coupled with a better-performing chipset/bus.
After giving the headline a cursory glance, I thought it said, "Patenting The Burn-In Test"....although somebody's probably already working on that one.
Now that Mac OS X and Darwin are out, Apple obviously has a vested interest in supporting the FSF. They have been trying to get changes to gcc for Altivec support and PPC optimization merged back into the tree, and they are showing at least some support for both Open Source and Free Software. Plus, development of more Cocoa software should in theory lead to better support of GNUStep in the future. With these changes, has the FSF's opinion of/relationship with Apple changed since the boycotting of the '80s, or is it still more or less adversarial?
Let's see, how about we introduce a slightly faster iMac with NO way to play DVDs (so much for the Digital Hub concept) and make it $100 more then the previous low-end model. WTF?
I don't necessarily need or want a flat-panel iMac, but raising the entry bar like that is going to get them slaughtered in the market. Especially the education market. Where's the incentive to keep buying iMacs if the price keeps going up?
A lot of speculation has it that the price increase is to prepare people for the costs of the eventual flat-panel model, so that Apple can say "See? It's the same price as our previous ones!" Well, that's great, but I think I'd be happier with cheaper models now to ensure a steady revenue stream so that there'll be a flat-panel iMac later....
Although Intuit chairman Bill Campbell (former head of Claris) sits on Apple's board, his products are generally considered the worst of their kind for the Mac. Quicken 2000 had more Y2K issues than Quicken 98 and was buggier to boot.
Apple in fact goes out of its way to highlight not one but two alternatives to Quicken products on its Mac OS X apps list: MoneyDance and MYOB. Check out this direct quote from the MYOB page:
"Rather than settling for outdated, unsupported Mac versions of the leading PC accounting software..." [emphasis added]
So clearly there's a bit of pent-up demand for alternatives to Quicken. IMHO A Mac OS X port could help lessen Quicken's relevance in the market.
2001-06-21 15:24:43 Roxio responds to Gracenote lawsuit...by countersuing! (articles,patents) (rejected)
Well, at least somebody got it submitted. I was hoping slashdot would run this; it's nice to have a patent story that doesn't make you want to pull out your hair. If Roxio wins, it will be good news for everybody who ever typed in a CD name. However, just by bringing the suit, they're throwing some much-needed exposure on a subject that hasn't seen much discussion outside of sites like this one: how far can you take the concept of intellectual property ownership with regard to collections of information?
Interesting to see how this turns out. There's some potential precedent-setting case law to be decided here.
for an even more damaging (long-term) story about our favorite entertainment corporations, check this story from last week's L.A. Times. Payola never went away, but now it looks like it might finally have raised enough eyebrows to start hurting.
If Apple can use its knowledge and influence to help convert annual production of about 25 million WinTel boxes into LinuxPCs, then, together with its own use of roughly 5 million PowerPCs, that 30 million piece annual volume would give the PowerPC a fair chance at gaining further market share against the roughly 95 million box market that WinTel boxes would then have.
Um, yeah, and why would Apple want to give away 25 million PowerPC chips to support an OS that it's trying to compete with? Shareholders and users alike would be infuriated.
Make no mistake, Apple supports (or at least doesn't discourage) Linux on PowerPCs, but they are a business with a goal of dominating the market with Mac OS X just as Microsoft is a business with the goal of dominating the market with Windows and Red Hat, Caldera, SuSE, etc. are businesses with a goal of dominating the market with $DISTRO. Apple would be highly unlikely to help take potential Mac OS X seats away from themselves in such a way.
--
Slashdot on Oracle? This I gotta see.
on
Slash 2.0 Released
·
· Score: 2
...and an Oracle version has been floating around for awhile...
Heh. No offense, but something tells me most people running slashcode aren't using Oracle as their backend, unless it's on a *very* internal server,
Truly you were ahead of your time. Every iMac made uses software to control its monitor settings (as do Apple's flat-panel screens). If only you could have held out another year, the installed base might have grown enough to show your investors a potential market.... alas, now we will never know.:-]
1. root access in Mac OS X is disabled by default. You can use sudo if you're an Administrator but that means knowing somebody's account/password, which is tougher, though certainly not impossible, to get if you have services turned off by default (which they are).
2. There is an article up today on StepWise that describes how to update sudo to fix a potential buffer overflow (basically, you're just replacing the Apple-installed one with the current patched code).
3. EVERY copy of Mac OS X IMHO should come with a copy of BrickHouse, a kick-ass GUI for configuring the built-in firewalling capability in OS X. It's certainly more attractive to most Mac users than using ipf.
4./etc/passwd is only accessed if the machine is booted into single-user mode (or if you futz with lookupd), and IIRC the password is shadowed in the release version of OS X.
5. Not trying to be combative, just pointing out some issues that slashdot readers might not be aware of if they haven't played much with OS X. Yes, we need to be more concerned over security than we were with OS 9, but to me, the benefits of the system -- like being able to fix/update it yourself instead of waiting for Apple to release patches -- far outweigh the increased need for vigilance.
I've been doing tech support for four years next month, and I can tell you without hesitation that in most cases, I do tend to go into auto-luser mode on *any* computer-related question, even pretty hefty ones from my geeky friends. Recently, one came to me about some technically arcane problem he was having with his Mac. The first thing I asked him (without even thinking about it) was if he had restarted yet.
Bear in mind, this was somebody who used to be my *boss* at my old tech-support job, and who's quite a bit smarter than I am. I felt bad for days afterward. (Of course, he ribbed the hell out of me for it.)
For those of you reading, if you're in tech support, do yourself a favor: Get out! Get out now!
As it has penetrated a mass market, and as broadband connections to the home have spread, the PC has become an entertainment hub and the heart of the digital life, with the gadgets to match.
Yeah, I liked this idea the first time I heard it, about an hour into the presentation. Good to see it confirmed by the "respectable" press.:-]
Slashdot Mirror
government managers would rather hire an underqualified person with a security clearance and later train them in their tradecraft
What bullshit. Government managers want somebody with 10 years of Java experience to come and work for $35,000/year. Then, once you get in, they remove all incentive for you to advance by promising cushy benefits, annual COLAs, and best of all, job security. Here at NIH, it took almost two years for a grossly incompetent worker to be fired, simply becuase of the bureaucratic crap they had to wade through. There are techs here who let their NT 4 MCSE certifications lapse because our institute is primarily a Novell shop (although we use Exchange, we have no full-time Exchange admin); when I asked if they were planning to go for the upgrade to Win2K, they said "why bother? I don't need it" That's the kind of attitude they have here.
Then there's the condescending view all government employees have of contractors. That Dilbert cartoon a few months ago where the contractor is asked to bring his own air? It's not a joke.
I hate it here. As soon as I pass my Oracle certification tests, I'm out of here, and the federal government can kiss my fucking ass.
Well, 1) this isn't an actual Slashdot interview, it's just an article linked to that's on another site...
and 2), Vincent hasn't got a leg to stand on, I'm afraid.
No new G4s, so the fastest Mac you can buy is a $3500 dual-800 MHz G4, and that's way more expensive than the $1800 800 Mhz G4 iMac, with virtually the same capabilities. Good one, Apple.
Wake me for MWNY, if you're still around.
No problem. Here's the only part people like you need to read:
Hope that helps.
where the config files are slightly different than on other unixes:
/Applications/Utilities folder and open Terminal
/etc/sshd_config at the shell prompt and enter the admin user password when prompted
/etc/ssh_config
/etc/hostconfig to determine whether SSH is enabled on your machine
/var/run/sshd.pid` to restart it
1. log in to Mac OS X as an admin user
2. navigate to the
3. type sudo perl -i.bk -p -e 's/#Protocol 2,1/Protocol 2/g'
4. type sudo perl -i.bk -p -e 's/2,1/2/g'
5. type grep SSH
6. if the response is "YES", type sudo kill -HUP `cat
7. Quit the Terminal program
That film was made by Simon "I haven't got a fucking clue as to how to edit a close-in action scene" West, the luminary genius behind "Con Air".
Note that he's scheduled to direct the feature-film adaptation of "The Prisoner" as well. God help fans of the original series.
He, Akiva Goldsman, and Nora Ephron should all be made part of the cast of the next "Survivor" series so that they can't do any more damage in Hollywood for at least a year or so.
I've found the Linux forum as well as the CPU/Motherboard one to be full of valuable info about building your own inexpensive Linux/x86 machine.
...is spell his name correctly......
(stupid lameness filter!)
It definitely is "ketchup-flavored." It has a weird taste to it.
It's a little sweeter than the standard stuff (as is the red ketchup in the similarly-shaped brightly-colored squeeze bottle; the original plastic bottle and the glass bottles are all the old recipie), and it's pumped full of vitamin C, so that's probably what you're tasting.
Hmmmm. This might actually represent a problem for Apple. Consider:
1. Their fastest processor is an 867 MHz G4.
2. Their fastest machine is a dual-800 MHz G4.
3. When the G5 is available, the slowest speed going to the desktop market according to the article is 1.2 GHz.
4. The rumor (unlikely as it sounds) is that there'll be an announcement at MacWorld Expo San Francisco of a G5-powered Mac.
Now, if you knew a machine that was 50% faster in clockspeed than the current model was just a month or two away, wouldn't you want to wait? I would. And that's pretty much the last thing Apple really needs at the mement.
Perhaps they should start with the slower speed models? Even an 800 MHz G5 should be faster than the current G4s, if coupled with a better-performing chipset/bus.
After giving the headline a cursory glance, I thought it said, "Patenting The Burn-In Test"....although somebody's probably already working on that one.
Now that Mac OS X and Darwin are out, Apple obviously has a vested interest in supporting the FSF. They have been trying to get changes to gcc for Altivec support and PPC optimization merged back into the tree, and they are showing at least some support for both Open Source and Free Software. Plus, development of more Cocoa software should in theory lead to better support of GNUStep in the future. With these changes, has the FSF's opinion of/relationship with Apple changed since the boycotting of the '80s, or is it still more or less adversarial?
Let's see, how about we introduce a slightly faster iMac with NO way to play DVDs (so much for the Digital Hub concept) and make it $100 more then the previous low-end model. WTF?
I don't necessarily need or want a flat-panel iMac, but raising the entry bar like that is going to get them slaughtered in the market. Especially the education market. Where's the incentive to keep buying iMacs if the price keeps going up?
A lot of speculation has it that the price increase is to prepare people for the costs of the eventual flat-panel model, so that Apple can say "See? It's the same price as our previous ones!" Well, that's great, but I think I'd be happier with cheaper models now to ensure a steady revenue stream so that there'll be a flat-panel iMac later....
--
Although Intuit chairman Bill Campbell (former head of Claris) sits on Apple's board, his products are generally considered the worst of their kind for the Mac. Quicken 2000 had more Y2K issues than Quicken 98 and was buggier to boot.
Apple in fact goes out of its way to highlight not one but two alternatives to Quicken products on its Mac OS X apps list: MoneyDance and MYOB. Check out this direct quote from the MYOB page:
"Rather than settling for outdated, unsupported Mac versions of the leading PC accounting software..." [emphasis added]
So clearly there's a bit of pent-up demand for alternatives to Quicken. IMHO A Mac OS X port could help lessen Quicken's relevance in the market.
--
yes the Adobe that has not ported a single application apart from its PDF Reader to Linux
Heh, don't feel bad; apparently Linux isn't the only Unix platform Adobe refuses to port anything other than a PDF reader to....
--
2001-06-21 15:24:43 Roxio responds to Gracenote lawsuit...by countersuing! (articles,patents) (rejected)
Well, at least somebody got it submitted. I was hoping slashdot would run this; it's nice to have a patent story that doesn't make you want to pull out your hair. If Roxio wins, it will be good news for everybody who ever typed in a CD name. However, just by bringing the suit, they're throwing some much-needed exposure on a subject that hasn't seen much discussion outside of sites like this one: how far can you take the concept of intellectual property ownership with regard to collections of information?
Interesting to see how this turns out. There's some potential precedent-setting case law to be decided here.
--
Waiting in the wings are Microsoft's "pipeline initiatives," under development or planned for later launch: the first table PC;
But I already have a PC on my table.
--
for an even more damaging (long-term) story about our favorite entertainment corporations, check this story from last week's L.A. Times. Payola never went away, but now it looks like it might finally have raised enough eyebrows to start hurting.
--
If Apple can use its knowledge and influence to help convert annual production of about 25 million WinTel boxes into LinuxPCs, then, together with its own use of roughly 5 million PowerPCs, that 30 million piece annual volume would give the PowerPC a fair chance at gaining further market share against the roughly 95 million box market that WinTel boxes would then have.
Um, yeah, and why would Apple want to give away 25 million PowerPC chips to support an OS that it's trying to compete with? Shareholders and users alike would be infuriated.
Make no mistake, Apple supports (or at least doesn't discourage) Linux on PowerPCs, but they are a business with a goal of dominating the market with Mac OS X just as Microsoft is a business with the goal of dominating the market with Windows and Red Hat, Caldera, SuSE, etc. are businesses with a goal of dominating the market with $DISTRO. Apple would be highly unlikely to help take potential Mac OS X seats away from themselves in such a way.
--
...and an Oracle version has been floating around for awhile...
Heh. No offense, but something tells me most people running slashcode aren't using Oracle as their backend, unless it's on a *very* internal server,
--
Truly you were ahead of your time. Every iMac made uses software to control its monitor settings (as do Apple's flat-panel screens). If only you could have held out another year, the installed base might have grown enough to show your investors a potential market.... alas, now we will never know. :-]
--
1. root access in Mac OS X is disabled by default. You can use sudo if you're an Administrator but that means knowing somebody's account/password, which is tougher, though certainly not impossible, to get if you have services turned off by default (which they are).
/etc/passwd is only accessed if the machine is booted into single-user mode (or if you futz with lookupd), and IIRC the password is shadowed in the release version of OS X.
2. There is an article up today on StepWise that describes how to update sudo to fix a potential buffer overflow (basically, you're just replacing the Apple-installed one with the current patched code).
3. EVERY copy of Mac OS X IMHO should come with a copy of BrickHouse, a kick-ass GUI for configuring the built-in firewalling capability in OS X. It's certainly more attractive to most Mac users than using ipf.
4.
5. Not trying to be combative, just pointing out some issues that slashdot readers might not be aware of if they haven't played much with OS X. Yes, we need to be more concerned over security than we were with OS 9, but to me, the benefits of the system -- like being able to fix/update it yourself instead of waiting for Apple to release patches -- far outweigh the increased need for vigilance.
--
I've been doing tech support for four years next month, and I can tell you without hesitation that in most cases, I do tend to go into auto-luser mode on *any* computer-related question, even pretty hefty ones from my geeky friends. Recently, one came to me about some technically arcane problem he was having with his Mac. The first thing I asked him (without even thinking about it) was if he had restarted yet.
Bear in mind, this was somebody who used to be my *boss* at my old tech-support job, and who's quite a bit smarter than I am. I felt bad for days afterward. (Of course, he ribbed the hell out of me for it.)
For those of you reading, if you're in tech support, do yourself a favor: Get out! Get out now!
--
Surely someone with his experience qualifies for this position.
--
As it has penetrated a mass market, and as broadband connections to the home have spread, the PC has become an entertainment hub and the heart of the digital life, with the gadgets to match.
:-]
Yeah, I liked this idea the first time I heard it, about an hour into the presentation. Good to see it confirmed by the "respectable" press.
--