Their whole corp website was unavailable in the recent past...
<amused sarcasm> And of course, it helps to with the amount of slashdot publicity to SCO, with probably large numbers of geeks either visiting/poking/etc the SCO webservers. </amused sarcasm>
I think that until SCO manages to clean up their act, we should make linking to their corp website mandatory on all related articles... make their bandwidth spike for weeks on end and perhaps we'll drive them into slashdotting-induced bankruptcy
And of course, my question is: without linux, how long would they have lasted anyways? I mean, how much crossed from linux back to unix. What about the apache project, etc? I'm just a linux geek myself, I've always avoided the unix end of things (justly so it seems) - so I really don't know much about it except for recent actions.
If you're talking about a real LANfest, not just a kiddie thing, then check out sponsorship. I was involved with an organization that threw a few of these (rented rooms in a hotel, some for gaming, other for warhammer, etc). We were able to get a lot of free software by plugging the big game names and telling them what was going on.
For a little blizzard/EA/etc logo on your the "sponsors" section of your advertisement, you'd be amazed what big game companies are willing to dish out. And the best part was that the games we used for the LAN sessions also became the prizes, as they were given out to winners of the various tournaments.
Of course, this doesn't work on a "BYOS" bring-your-own-software type event... but really these things are a great chance for various companies to advertise their games. Your local comp shop might even chip in for hardware if you find an in.
Even better, let your local geek broker have a kiosk in the corner to sell NIC's/hubs/powerbars/etc to all the poor kiddies that have hardware failures. Nothing makes a good sale location like a huge gathering of geeks
A) Actually, I would strongly recommend AGAINST using DHCP. If it worked like it was supposed to, it would seem to be ideal for that kind of setup. Unfortunately, it never does. Somehow, with the combination of Win98/ME/2000/XP and Linux computers all stuck on the same LAN, there are always some computers that just won't get an IP correctly, and cant see the other computers.
Er, with my 'nix DHCP server, and a workplace that consists of Macs, 'nix machines, and mixed versions of windows machines... I've never had this problem.
Perhaps the prior step of "get a competent network admin is preferable?
Maybe there's more to it than I expect, but I don't really expect anything spectacular from VBScript/JScript.
Back on the day when there was Qbasic, etc, I managed to program a little tanks/w lasers game - a-la-atari - which, for computers we had at the time, was actually quite spiffy (classmates actually played it!).
We've upped the bar quite considerably nowadays, and frankly a Qbasic equivilent just isn't as cool.
At least with a full Visual Basic IDE (yes, it's evil, but C++ is a hard-sell for startoffs) you can do a few graphics that move around, maybe a simple galaga-type game if you get a few bitblt samples to mess with... but the lack of such an available environment and/or samples (nibbles, gorillas, etc) can be a little bit scary for newbies with high aspirations.
(or, if they're really bright, a second hard drive with Linux/*BSD/whatever, so they can pick up GTK+ or QT or whichever widget set is trendy these days).
This is exactly what made me finall make somewhat of a switch. After continuous poking and prodding at openGL, I finall got tired of trying to get old GL samples to compile in my current VC++ version (or maybe it's also because VS6 doesn't like XP?).
First, I've tried installing Mesa 3d on my laptop, which was already 'nix. For a P2-266/w a tiny graphics card, the samples render livably. Now, since I really want to test out how well GL apps render on an accelerated card+fast PC, I've installed an extra HD on my main box just to use GL with 'nix.
One of the biggest issues I've had so far is that simple Mesa/GL samples with documentation don't seem very easy to come by. Yes, there are books (and supposedly good ones), but to find one in stock costs over $100 at the moment.
I'm comfortable enough with 3d (from my early D3D/GL days) and C++ to make a go at getting something up and running using GL/GCC, but the lack of starting tutorial or simple samples... tracing down which libs to link etc etc is quite maddening when trying to start with 'nix programming.
Perhaps this is also a good place for any veteran gcc coders (or better, openGL/w GCC) to step forward and provide links and samples?
The high price every new version of Visual Studio seems to be a real detriment to MS. If startup developers can't even afford to teach themselves a little coding, then I will expect more and more developers to move to 'nix. With more 'nix developers, we will find better and cooler 'nix apps amongst the dross (maybe even some nice games eventually), and gradually accelerate away from the world of windows.
And this is our supercomputing center.... also known as "the flock?"
I wonder what they'd call something like this. What do you call a linked group of processing computers? Maybe it depends on purpose - like "the armada" for military Beowulfs, or perhaps the "inquisition" for the RIAA
a) Not recommended for exams (it's ok on assignments)
b) Swearing on exams is even less recommended
But in a large essay-type assignment... it's perfect to just slip in a comment like "my cat's breath smells like cat food" just to see if it will be caught. If it does get caught and you get docked, claim somebody must have typed it in between a bathroom break and your final print...
I seem to remember a similar occurance on slashdot, where a + modded comment has some amusing remark about Taco and CowboyNeil. It was quite amusing:-)
I suppose there must be some type of disclaimed noting that these XP discs are not to be resold? I mean, at $50, you can probably make a profit on ebay if you sell the XP CD and continue using Lindows.
Meanwhilst, and Lindows users who want to sell off their XP CD's cheap? XP is supposedly friendly with my games/hardware, so I wouldn't mind having a copy myself for dual-boot (not a Lindows user though).
How about crossover office, to allow you to use your Microshaft products on a linux machine? I'm not sure how well it works (oo is fine for me), but perhaps some other/.'ers know a bit better.
I think that years of trying to maintain my frag ratio (with gibs flying everywhere), while simulataneously chomping on a cheeseburger or whatever, has permanently fixed my ability to digest food. Come on, like you've never been chewing on a stick of beef jerky whilst simultaneously mousemoving and pumping the railgun trigger - to watch as enemy kibbles and perhaps a head or two come flying past.
However, those goatse links usually still do fairly poorly for my appetite. It's annoying that the little buggers are finding better ways to disguise them
I found that in a lot of college stuff, simply churning out loads of crapola netted a decent mark. As long as I was close to the topic of the question (for multi-mark questions) and hit a few key points, then I got some of the marks. I think it's a fallability of teachers... with so many tests to mark, they just don't/can't take the time to entirely read every answer fully, so they skim for key points or common mistakes. Don't really screw up, and you get the marks. I remmeber at one time smart students were embedding "easter egg" comments and still getting super-high grades, simply because the teacher felt secure in briefly skimming their answers (my 150+ page final coding project was nice for this).
Oh, and in an aside... I tried to fill out a form today, my handwriting definately seems to get less dependable the more time I spend behind a keyboard, and of course there's no backspace key.
Yes, but if you can't get idiot windows users to realize that using "auto-preview", opening "pif/exe/bat/com" files is bad, and "Click the monkey to claim your cash" doesn't really win you cash, them...
Chances are you're not going to make informed 'nix users out of them. The scariest thing is the half-educated users. You know, the ones who know how to install XX but not to run it as root, and especially not without patching. That's what gets you rooted.
The scariest part, at one point, we're all half-educated... it's part of the learning curve. You can't just automatically become a linux guru... and even many of the best linux admins at one point were probably scratching their heads (or other parts) and thinking, "oh, it will run fine as root"
OK, so Microsoft makes a patch available to hundreds or thousands of corporate customers. That patch fixes the current virus weakness... but often by nuking something else that might be important. Now... why didn't you know about that? Because you can't see everything that is happening, and MS doesn't tell you.
Yes, it's true than many orgs don't have admins capable of reading/editing a lot of source, but many do. And when you have thousands of orgs, at least one of them is likely to have a competant coder that looks and says "whoa, this doesn't look right" or - if not, and something doesn't break - can go in, trace the bug down, and then say "whoa, this is screwy, this should be XX not YY."
By promoting open-source, every customer also has the ability to become a developer - or a fixer - and contribute. By using MS closed-source... only MS has that power, and hence the delays/problems/explosions involved with patching.
Ummm.... actually the patch would be to stick a 'nix bootable install disk on your CD-ROM drive. Otherwise... you'll have a really fun time trying to get Evolution to run in windows...
"The technology will move faster than the court systems," said Jorge A. Gonzalez, the founder of Zeropaid.com, a repository of information for file-sharing software. "The new programs being developed are going to mask users. By the time Verizon has to start turning over a lot of names, the identities of users will be unknown."
That about sums it up. Filesharing isn't going to disappear, it will just get smarter. Eventually, we'll start pulling the same measures as email, although they might be more effective in P2P: tarpitting, blacklisting, etc etc
In the meantime though, why not move to Canada. I've yet to hear of such a case here (possibly offset by the crappy CD-tax?). Anyone else heard of RIAA attacks here up North?
Heck, if we can build one of these at home, I'm fairly sure that the "enemy" can too. Electronics aren't such a good idea when they become too depended-upon... especially in situations with a lot of sand, impact, or moisture, etc etc.
Ah, so you're the guy to talk to when the next article about direct-optic-nerve implants comes up.
The articles are a bit beyond my understands - IANAS - I'm more-or-less a sysadmin and at times a developer. Also at one time a web-developer, and thus I have to ask, what's with all the spaces in the links?
Scientific studies do work, often because they're about an unknown.
However, statistical studies, particularly in business or goverment, are very very often skewed. Even when the intent isn't to skew, it's extremely hard for the studier to be unbiased.In the case of games Vs violence... you really have to point your study to prove or disprove the theory, and in doing so a bias is often added.
Not my first choice of purchase, but has anyone looked at the cost of sewing nowadays?
I mean, supplies are expensive, the cost of sewing machines can be incredible (cheap ones in the hundreds, up to thousands for higher-end though), and patterns are definately a rip.
Maybe we need an "open pattern site" - anyone got a link?
Hopefully we'll see more of this type of creativity. Even more hopefully, it won't be stifled by patents, etc.
But seriously, thinking back to what it cost for decent A/V equipment back "in the day", and how much one can do with a decent video camera, and video-editing software+encoder is amazing.
Open-source must progress. Kazaa must stay alive. As long as a mass-transition media, a mass-communication/support media, and free/cheap tools are around that keep improving - somebody is bound to come up with something pretty nifty.
Substitute lots of money with lots of talent, and MPAA doesn't have a chance.
Ah, but the whole postal thing came from the fact that after way - many ex-soldiers who couldn't find work elsewhere ended up in the postal system. So in that case you had a bunch of people with gun-training, shell-shock, a post-war mentality, and supposedly a high-stress environment (I say supposedly since I'm not really sure how high-stress postal work is, nor am I sure it compares to tech work, or even worse callcentres).
In the case of most techies... I think it would be more like "geeze, that's the third person mysteriously electrocuted this week", or "look out, he's got a slide-rule!".
Normal people play violent video games with lots of blood etc.
So do violent people
If you went out and took a stat, finding that 1 in every 5 people who play violent games has urges towards violence... an assumption could be drawn that the games promote violence in such violence. But... what about it such violent people are drawn to the games because of their violent nature, or simple just 1 in 5 people are violent.
I think if you took a group of abou 100 normal/anti-violence people, stuck them on PC's, and had them play UT2003, Quake3, etc until their eyeballs glowed... then took them to watch a live execution or whatnot, chances are they would be no less freaked out by watching a real person get his head shot off than before the study... sleep deprivation and other side-effect might play a factor instead.
It's the old damning lie about statistics... is it:
Person "B" does action "X" because of stimulus "A"
or
Person "B" is drawn towards stimulus "A" because he is of personality type drawn towards action "X"
or
Person "B" enjoys "A", and performs action "X", simply because 1 in 5 because he is in category "C" and such a type enjoys "X" and "A".
The idea on this was that the "Full Serve" pumps, you pay differently if you do have a GPS. Still dumb, I'd get a fake/broken GPS just to make it look like I was already being taxed, and avoid the surcharge on a normal gassing. Of course, they'd probably notice and out-of-state license plate... but I'm sure there are many other ways around it.
Slashdot Mirror
Their whole corp website was unavailable in the recent past...
<amused sarcasm> And of course, it helps to with the amount of slashdot publicity to SCO, with probably large numbers of geeks either visiting/poking/etc the SCO webservers. </amused sarcasm>
I think that until SCO manages to clean up their act, we should make linking to their corp website mandatory on all related articles... make their bandwidth spike for weeks on end and perhaps we'll drive them into slashdotting-induced bankruptcy
And of course, my question is: without linux, how long would they have lasted anyways? I mean, how much crossed from linux back to unix. What about the apache project, etc? I'm just a linux geek myself, I've always avoided the unix end of things (justly so it seems) - so I really don't know much about it except for recent actions.
If you're talking about a real LANfest, not just a kiddie thing, then check out sponsorship. I was involved with an organization that threw a few of these (rented rooms in a hotel, some for gaming, other for warhammer, etc). We were able to get a lot of free software by plugging the big game names and telling them what was going on.
For a little blizzard/EA/etc logo on your the "sponsors" section of your advertisement, you'd be amazed what big game companies are willing to dish out. And the best part was that the games we used for the LAN sessions also became the prizes, as they were given out to winners of the various tournaments.
Of course, this doesn't work on a "BYOS" bring-your-own-software type event... but really these things are a great chance for various companies to advertise their games. Your local comp shop might even chip in for hardware if you find an in.
Even better, let your local geek broker have a kiosk in the corner to sell NIC's/hubs/powerbars/etc to all the poor kiddies that have hardware failures. Nothing makes a good sale location like a huge gathering of geeks
A) Actually, I would strongly recommend AGAINST using DHCP. If it worked like it was supposed to, it would seem to be ideal for that kind of setup. Unfortunately, it never does. Somehow, with the combination of Win98/ME/2000/XP and Linux computers all stuck on the same LAN, there are always some computers that just won't get an IP correctly, and cant see the other computers.
Er, with my 'nix DHCP server, and a workplace that consists of Macs, 'nix machines, and mixed versions of windows machines... I've never had this problem.
Perhaps the prior step of "get a competent network admin is preferable?
Maybe there's more to it than I expect, but I don't really expect anything spectacular from VBScript/JScript.
/w lasers game - a-la-atari - which, for computers we had at the time, was actually quite spiffy (classmates actually played it!).
Back on the day when there was Qbasic, etc, I managed to program a little tanks
We've upped the bar quite considerably nowadays, and frankly a Qbasic equivilent just isn't as cool.
At least with a full Visual Basic IDE (yes, it's evil, but C++ is a hard-sell for startoffs) you can do a few graphics that move around, maybe a simple galaga-type game if you get a few bitblt samples to mess with... but the lack of such an available environment and/or samples (nibbles, gorillas, etc) can be a little bit scary for newbies with high aspirations.
(or, if they're really bright, a second hard drive with Linux/*BSD/whatever, so they can pick up GTK+ or QT or whichever widget set is trendy these days).
/w a tiny graphics card, the samples render livably. Now, since I really want to test out how well GL apps render on an accelerated card+fast PC, I've installed an extra HD on my main box just to use GL with 'nix.
/w GCC) to step forward and provide links and samples?
This is exactly what made me finall make somewhat of a switch. After continuous poking and prodding at openGL, I finall got tired of trying to get old GL samples to compile in my current VC++ version (or maybe it's also because VS6 doesn't like XP?).
First, I've tried installing Mesa 3d on my laptop, which was already 'nix. For a P2-266
One of the biggest issues I've had so far is that simple Mesa/GL samples with documentation don't seem very easy to come by. Yes, there are books (and supposedly good ones), but to find one in stock costs over $100 at the moment.
I'm comfortable enough with 3d (from my early D3D/GL days) and C++ to make a go at getting something up and running using GL/GCC, but the lack of starting tutorial or simple samples... tracing down which libs to link etc etc is quite maddening when trying to start with 'nix programming.
Perhaps this is also a good place for any veteran gcc coders (or better, openGL
The high price every new version of Visual Studio seems to be a real detriment to MS. If startup developers can't even afford to teach themselves a little coding, then I will expect more and more developers to move to 'nix. With more 'nix developers, we will find better and cooler 'nix apps amongst the dross (maybe even some nice games eventually), and gradually accelerate away from the world of windows.
And this is our supercomputing center.... also known as "the flock?"
I wonder what they'd call something like this. What do you call a linked group of processing computers? Maybe it depends on purpose - like "the armada" for military Beowulfs, or perhaps the "inquisition" for the RIAA
a) Not recommended for exams (it's ok on assignments)
:-)
b) Swearing on exams is even less recommended
But in a large essay-type assignment... it's perfect to just slip in a comment like "my cat's breath smells like cat food" just to see if it will be caught. If it does get caught and you get docked, claim somebody must have typed it in between a bathroom break and your final print...
I seem to remember a similar occurance on slashdot, where a + modded comment has some amusing remark about Taco and CowboyNeil. It was quite amusing
I suppose there must be some type of disclaimed noting that these XP discs are not to be resold? I mean, at $50, you can probably make a profit on ebay if you sell the XP CD and continue using Lindows.
Meanwhilst, and Lindows users who want to sell off their XP CD's cheap? XP is supposedly friendly with my games/hardware, so I wouldn't mind having a copy myself for dual-boot (not a Lindows user though).
How about crossover office, to allow you to use your Microshaft products on a linux machine? I'm not sure how well it works (oo is fine for me), but perhaps some other /.'ers know a bit better.
I think that years of trying to maintain my frag ratio (with gibs flying everywhere), while simulataneously chomping on a cheeseburger or whatever, has permanently fixed my ability to digest food. Come on, like you've never been chewing on a stick of beef jerky whilst simultaneously mousemoving and pumping the railgun trigger - to watch as enemy kibbles and perhaps a head or two come flying past.
However, those goatse links usually still do fairly poorly for my appetite. It's annoying that the little buggers are finding better ways to disguise them
I found that in a lot of college stuff, simply churning out loads of crapola netted a decent mark. As long as I was close to the topic of the question (for multi-mark questions) and hit a few key points, then I got some of the marks. I think it's a fallability of teachers... with so many tests to mark, they just don't/can't take the time to entirely read every answer fully, so they skim for key points or common mistakes. Don't really screw up, and you get the marks. I remmeber at one time smart students were embedding "easter egg" comments and still getting super-high grades, simply because the teacher felt secure in briefly skimming their answers (my 150+ page final coding project was nice for this).
Oh, and in an aside... I tried to fill out a form today, my handwriting definately seems to get less dependable the more time I spend behind a keyboard, and of course there's no backspace key.
Yes, but why link the spaces themselves, as opposed to spacing apart the links? Maybe I'm missing something, you're the eye-guy after all. :-)
Yes, but if you can't get idiot windows users to realize that using "auto-preview", opening "pif/exe/bat/com" files is bad, and "Click the monkey to claim your cash" doesn't really win you cash, them...
Chances are you're not going to make informed 'nix users out of them. The scariest thing is the half-educated users. You know, the ones who know how to install XX but not to run it as root, and especially not without patching. That's what gets you rooted.
The scariest part, at one point, we're all half-educated... it's part of the learning curve. You can't just automatically become a linux guru... and even many of the best linux admins at one point were probably scratching their heads (or other parts) and thinking, "oh, it will run fine as root"
OK, so Microsoft makes a patch available to hundreds or thousands of corporate customers. That patch fixes the current virus weakness... but often by nuking something else that might be important. Now... why didn't you know about that? Because you can't see everything that is happening, and MS doesn't tell you.
Yes, it's true than many orgs don't have admins capable of reading/editing a lot of source, but many do. And when you have thousands of orgs, at least one of them is likely to have a competant coder that looks and says "whoa, this doesn't look right" or - if not, and something doesn't break - can go in, trace the bug down, and then say "whoa, this is screwy, this should be XX not YY."
By promoting open-source, every customer also has the ability to become a developer - or a fixer - and contribute. By using MS closed-source... only MS has that power, and hence the delays/problems/explosions involved with patching.
Ummm.... actually the patch would be to stick a 'nix bootable install disk on your CD-ROM drive. Otherwise... you'll have a really fun time trying to get Evolution to run in windows...
How about upstart? It sounds more like sendo is some little whiney kid bitching about being stuck at the end of the line for street-hockey.
"The technology will move faster than the court systems," said Jorge A. Gonzalez, the founder of Zeropaid.com, a repository of information for file-sharing software. "The new programs being developed are going to mask users. By the time Verizon has to start turning over a lot of names, the identities of users will be unknown."
That about sums it up. Filesharing isn't going to disappear, it will just get smarter. Eventually, we'll start pulling the same measures as email, although they might be more effective in P2P: tarpitting, blacklisting, etc etc
In the meantime though, why not move to Canada. I've yet to hear of such a case here (possibly offset by the crappy CD-tax?). Anyone else heard of RIAA attacks here up North?
Heck, if we can build one of these at home, I'm fairly sure that the "enemy" can too. Electronics aren't such a good idea when they become too depended-upon... especially in situations with a lot of sand, impact, or moisture, etc etc.
Ah, so you're the guy to talk to when the next article about direct-optic-nerve implants comes up.
The articles are a bit beyond my understands - IANAS - I'm more-or-less a sysadmin and at times a developer. Also at one time a web-developer, and thus I have to ask, what's with all the spaces in the links?
Scientific studies do work, often because they're about an unknown.
However, statistical studies, particularly in business or goverment, are very very often skewed. Even when the intent isn't to skew, it's extremely hard for the studier to be unbiased.In the case of games Vs violence... you really have to point your study to prove or disprove the theory, and in doing so a bias is often added.
BTW, what are you a scientist of?
Not my first choice of purchase, but has anyone looked at the cost of sewing nowadays?
I mean, supplies are expensive, the cost of sewing machines can be incredible (cheap ones in the hundreds, up to thousands for higher-end though), and patterns are definately a rip.
Maybe we need an "open pattern site" - anyone got a link?
Hopefully we'll see more of this type of creativity. Even more hopefully, it won't be stifled by patents, etc.
But seriously, thinking back to what it cost for decent A/V equipment back "in the day", and how much one can do with a decent video camera, and video-editing software+encoder is amazing.
Open-source must progress. Kazaa must stay alive. As long as a mass-transition media, a mass-communication/support media, and free/cheap tools are around that keep improving - somebody is bound to come up with something pretty nifty.
Substitute lots of money with lots of talent, and MPAA doesn't have a chance.
Ah, but the whole postal thing came from the fact that after way - many ex-soldiers who couldn't find work elsewhere ended up in the postal system. So in that case you had a bunch of people with gun-training, shell-shock, a post-war mentality, and supposedly a high-stress environment (I say supposedly since I'm not really sure how high-stress postal work is, nor am I sure it compares to tech work, or even worse callcentres).
In the case of most techies... I think it would be more like "geeze, that's the third person mysteriously electrocuted this week", or "look out, he's got a slide-rule!".
Indeed, but even studies are quite often biased.
Normal people play violent video games with lots of blood etc.
So do violent people
If you went out and took a stat, finding that 1 in every 5 people who play violent games has urges towards violence... an assumption could be drawn that the games promote violence in such violence. But... what about it such violent people are drawn to the games because of their violent nature, or simple just 1 in 5 people are violent.
I think if you took a group of abou 100 normal/anti-violence people, stuck them on PC's, and had them play UT2003, Quake3, etc until their eyeballs glowed... then took them to watch a live execution or whatnot, chances are they would be no less freaked out by watching a real person get his head shot off than before the study... sleep deprivation and other side-effect might play a factor instead.
It's the old damning lie about statistics... is it:
Person "B" does action "X" because of stimulus "A"
or
Person "B" is drawn towards stimulus "A" because he is of personality type drawn towards action "X"
or
Person "B" enjoys "A", and performs action "X", simply because 1 in 5 because he is in category "C" and such a type enjoys "X" and "A".
The idea on this was that the "Full Serve" pumps, you pay differently if you do have a GPS. Still dumb, I'd get a fake/broken GPS just to make it look like I was already being taxed, and avoid the surcharge on a normal gassing. Of course, they'd probably notice and out-of-state license plate... but I'm sure there are many other ways around it.