I recall reading rumors of a blind fella who could play MunchMan on the TI-99/4 just by listening to the sounds in the background of the game.
While my experience is no where near that in-depth, I do remember that the computer made distinct sounds when performing certain tasks, such as reading GROM, initializing, running BASIC programs (I recall that some statements also have distinct sounds as well.)
Since then I have been able to detect certain sounds from my machines which indicate normal operations; to some extent I think we all do, just as we do with cars to "know" that something isn't right. And it's been pretty consistent through all of my computers: Commodore 64, 128D, Atari 800XL, various Amigas (amazing things heard by holding your ear to the A500 power supply,) many desktop PCs and notebooks. Even some console systems generate sounds under operation (an old NES on my shelf with a bad filter cap is good for this.)
I'm curious to know what correlations between design type, grounding, processor architecture, and other factors exist for this. Might be worth investigating like this chap did, should I find the time to do so.
However, you might notice that at least one critical advisory that affected Windows 98 never had a patch released through Windows Update or for download.
The ASN.1 vulnerability affects Windows 98, but MS would only release the patch to you if you had a contract or called them about it. See here. How many people are going to call MS about it? How many Windows 98 machines are now operating on the Internet blissfully, ignorantly vulnerable?
Absolute hogwash. I plan to traumatize my children in many different ways, and this just adds another angle to my approach. This is how I plan to weed out the losers in my spawn; those who lack the emotional fortitude to survive a 1337 name and the various other mental tortures incurred by an upbringing of my design will fail in life. And too damn bad. You gotta be tough to survive in this world, and I will only produce children that will rule the world, or have a complete meltdown and not get in the way of others.
I work in Solaris and find myself frequenting SunFreeware for packages -- mostly for things to compile software:) I habitually install gcc, bison, flex, and a number of other packages on a new system. Then I go to work compiling SSH, Apache with PHP, MySQL, and whatever else.
On occassion I find a useful package that someone has put together and install it. If I am happy with how it runs, I may look into compiling it myself, or perhaps even leave it be. Packages also come in VERY handy at times when I am having problems compiling something and am in a pinch or just damned tired of messing.
Presently, I'm working on a test environment on which I can build packages for distribution to others machines that I admin. Once the work is done, there's little sense to do it multiple times.
Something else that comes to mind mirrors what another posted; non-time sensitive, delayed Internet access. Again, similar to something like FidoNet.
As a thrown out, chaotic system this doesn't seem all that useful. But put a bunch of access points with cache-and-relay software on the road, PDAs and other mobile devices with the client for that system could deliver email to other messages to the AP, which would then cache and deliver the messages when in contact with an Internet uplink. The return might be a PITA, though, since all APs would have to cache the reply.
It seems akin to reversing the role of the AP and client; moving AP, stationary client. Or even better, moving AP and moving client. It's a roaming WiFi orgy, and just needs the right software to manage it.
I would like to see something like this proliferate through heavily censored countries. Especially if APs could exchange caching information when in range with each other. That would ensure that if one poor unlucky soul got caught with such a back pack, the information will still make it out or back in. Good encryption will also be a must in this case, since the Goons will want to disect it as much as possible.
Which brings up random political thoughts, mostly curiousity as to the real long-term benefits a country believes it will gain by oppressing its peoples rather than allowing free thought and information exchange. I guess it would almost be like an organization that pursues people for trading creative works of others so that the producers of such works might become more well known. But I digress.
If Windows was marketed as a product for experts, I could excuse the current situation, but it's marketed as the OS for everybody (including your mom)
And who among us would like to take the time to teach my mom Linux? Not I. I do not have the time nor the patience. It was fairly easy to teach her to not trust attachments, use a virus scanner, and to install updates when Windows says "There are updates ready to install". Amazingly, neither of my parents have ever contracted a virus.
A think a better solution might just be to take computer away from those who are incapable of, or refuse to, learn to avoid the larger "gotchyas" of technology. You know, like they do with guns and cars.
Hardly comparable. You cannot realistically compare random criminal acts against which there is little to no defense to contracting an email virus -- which is defensible.
When I lived in a small town I slept with my windows and front door open, and the flimsy screen door sometimes latched. When I moved into a bigger city with a more random populous and higher frequency of crime I stopped such behavior.
It's called prevention. An ounce of which (updates and antivirus) is worth a pound of cure (new email client, etc.)
Along side YAM on Amiga, I've been using Windows NT/2000 with OE, and now Windows XP with Outlook 2003, and combinations thereof since 1997 and have never once contracted a virus. And working for an ISP during those times I received a shytload of them in my email.
How did I accomplish this seemingly tremendous feat? Windows Update (*gasp*) and Norton AntiVirus (but now AVG v7.) (Well, that and an exercise of common sense of which even my parents are now capable.) I have also had HTML rendering turned off since the option appeared in OE6, as well as in Outlook 2003.
Amazing. Should I go down in history? Seriously, NEVER gotten a Windows virus. But, perhaps one day it will happen. When it does, I'll slap my forehead and say something like "Well, I'll be damned" as I recover my formerly virus-free system from System Restore, and if that doesn't work then I'll reload Windows from an image I made when I last loaded the system and recover all my lost data from an automatic backup made early that morning.
I might even shed a tear for the few emails that I lost between the backup and the virus. Boo hoo.
Actually, the entire system was clocked against the 28.something MHz custom chips for synchronizing with NTSC video. (Different MHz used for PAL machines, blah.)
The 28MHz clock divided down to 14MHz and 7MHz, the former which was the video clock and the later used for the 68000. This made the system perfect for Genlock use. Similar in reason to why most CD player processors ran at 88.2kHz -- double the 44.1kHz sample rate of a CD.
It had nothing to do with intentionally crippling the system. That didn't happen until much later in Commodore/Amiga's history with the development of the AGA and never-released AAA chipsets, Zorro III bus problems, and others (should read Dave Haynie's document collection sometime. It's scary.)
Where are you finding your board specs? I was able to oc my C64 way back when (much to the shigrin of VIC-II;) because of my extensive knowledge of the mainboard. Having the schematics in a SAMS book didn't hurt that endeavour. But I'm having a difficult time finding schematics for NES, et al.
I am glad to see this as a root post. Anyone who has ever dug into the internals of the Amiga, Mac, or Atari ST hardware has found that moving to faster 680x0 CPUs did not affect game speed, only the amount of lag (we called it "bog") in a game.
I have nearly two decades of experience with the 680x0 CPUs in the Amiga systems. I remember being absolutely thrilled when Sega used the 68000 CPU in the Genesis. I hacked an original unit which had the 68-pin package with a 68010. Honestly, I do not remember the full results, but I recall I was still able to play the majority of my collection (two carts at the time, hahahaha.)
I also toyed with the idea to replace the 68000 with an MTec 68020 accelerator pulled from my Amiga 500. I never tried it, and I still am not so sure it would have worked anyway. If the AmigaOS was a little less hard-wired to the Amiga hardware architecture, given a little work, we might could have seen AmigaOS running on a Genny;) Hell, we might still be able to see that just for kicks.
Having gone from 68000 to 68040 in all its discernable steps (I still dream of a 68060/PPC accelerator for my A4000,) I have been able to bring all of my games with me. The only problem I have is with expected timing of the OCS chipset versus the AGA chipset. But there are a number of great hard drive installers which over come this, as well as system "degraders" which place the computer in a state almost identical to the original Amiga hardware.
In any case, I'm inspired by this article and look forward to dropping a 12MHz clock generator in my Sega II (provided its CPU will support it.)
(climbing up on soap box) It is also worth mentioning that us old-hat gamers take a lot of shit for being so nostalgic and blah blah blah, aching for an era long-past. I got news for those who cast stones, many of those games were FUN, and down-right phuqn great. I will not say that none of my collections are nostalgic -- I have a number of Atari 2600 carts which I never played then and do not play now other than for testing, simply because they are Atari. But the majority of the games I collect (Amiga, Atari, Sega, NES, TI, C64, and others) WERE fun, and are STILL FUN.
How many people are still playing a "dead" console because the games rocked and you cannot get them for "modern" consoles? PS1 is almost 10 years old, and yet it still has a large following. I bet in 10 years there will still be a large faction of people playing the original XBox because some of the titles will not be available on newer consoles, or just will not play the same. (I do wonder how game play of XBox 1 games will be on the XBox 2...)
Later statement will reveal that their Windows 2000 Server VPN fell victim to an exploit of the six-month old ASN.1 vulnerability, which their automatic update hadn't fixed yet. Ergo, Microsoft is responsible for the leak of their own source code:)
(CNN) -- A sneaky e-mail worm continued to clog Internet traffic Tuesday, spreading faster than previous Web bugs by appearing as an innocuous error message.
The worm -- dubbed "MyDoom," "Novarg" or "WORM_MIMAIL.R" -- was copying itself at a fierce pace, so fast that some companies were having to shut down their mail servers to stop it. And a new clue was emerging as to the source of the infection.
Virus experts suggested MyDoom's author was a fan of the Linux open source community, because the bug, which targets computers running Microsoft Windows, launched a Denial of Service Attack on SCO's site. Utah-based SCO Group, owner of the UNIX operating system, claims some versions of the Linux operating system use its proprietary code.
"The MyDoom worm takes the Linux Wars to a new intensity," said Chris Belthoff, an analyst for anti-virus firm Sophos. "It appears that the author of MyDoom may have taken the war of words from the courtrooms and Internet message boards to a new level by unleashing this worm which attacks SCO's Web site."
Below is feedback I sent to them in response:
Re: Experts: Vicious worm 'Linux war' weapon
What a load of media-hyped FUD. Amazing how the article doesn't mention that back door left on an infected machine which allows Internet traffic to pass through, such as SMTP (email -- for spam) and other traffic.
As a respected news outlet, one would expect CNN to do its research on matters such as these, especially when such information is easily located:
Other conclusions could be drawn, such as the attack on SCO is just a diversion to the real intent of the worm. I will avoid making such conclusions, as the intentions of the writer may never be known. But you have stuck your neck out making such conclusions and slanted the provided information to that end.
Jeordan Legon, this article ear-marks you as a piss-poor journalist, and if this tripe is what we can expect from you, I hope you never again publish a technical article.
Give up the domain. Great. So Microsoft still gives the poor kid the shaft. There's no violation here. Personally, I'd tell Microsoft to shove it up its ass.
MCSE training? Did he really commit such a heinous act to warrant this kind of attrition? Seriously, how about training AND testing?
Buncha bullshit IMHO. I guess he should start taking rides from strangers who offer him candy, too.
Sorry. Shove it, Microsoft. This poor kid is no harm to you, and neither is his domain. And this "settlement" might be a great way to turn him against you forever.
Being the nice, trusting fella I am, I would *like* to give Big Blue the benefit of the doubt on this, if only from the past.
In the 80's, IBM learned that screwing customers could only get them so far, and it eventually lost its place as THE elite vendor.
Perhaps learning from its past, IBM could embrace openness, realizing that a company can enjoy a much longer lived empire by making its subjects happy, rather than the short term "rape-and-pillage" approach which just leaves everyone broke, dazed, really pissed off, and without a ride home.
And who knows... maybe they really have OS/2 burried in a deep dark secret place (an Area 51 of the tech world) fully functional and with working drivers, just waiting for Microsoft to slip up, and then BAM! Instant revolution! The streets will flow with blood! BUWAHAHAHA;) (Sorry)
The article mentions tweaking the LD_LIBRARY_PATH...
I was told a long time ago by a number of people I considered to be Solaris gurus -- not to mention in a number of books, Sun docs, etc. -- that the LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable was not only heading towards total deprecation, but introduced a system-wide security issue.
In its stead, we were supposed to use the "crle" command to set our library paths.
On all of my boxes I use crle and not LD_LIBRARY_PATH and everything works as expected.
Any pro developers or Solaris technical folks that can comment on this?
For the same reason we compared 32-bit and 16-bit. Why Amiga users argued with Windows users.:)
But really, if we don't have comparisons like these then it's harder to justify the migration, and it's also difficult for the general public to gauge progress in the development of 64-bit technology in both software and hardware.
But you should also remember that the prolific market is SMB (Joe Businessman,) which will continue to use freely/cheaply available software such as gcc. If these markets do not see the value in moving to 64-bit and beyond, then we could potentially be stuck with exorbitantly priced 64-bit boxes languishing with an uncertain future.
Think about what happened with similar technology in the past.
IDE vs SCSI.
Parallel vs any other better data bus. (It absolutely irked me that a pp-Zip drive could bring a considerable FAST computer to a stand-still.)
And the list continues.
I accept this article as dumbed down a bit for the lower end, non-guru user who is wooed by the 64-bit "revolution" but not technically saavy enough to understand the "32-bit faster than 64-bit" comments that continue to surface in many forums. If bean counters and cheap tech workers can be made to understand that there truly ARE benefits in 64-bit technology, then progress will not be held in place by beating the 32-bit horse to death -- even if it does run at hellaspeeds.
How many times have we slapped around these types of people with our new technology trout only to hear "Yeah, but $OLD_TECHNOLOGY is STILL being developed, and it's cheap. Why should we bother with $NEW_TECHNOLOGY." Yeah yeah, I know that technically 64-bit isn't NEW, but to these guys...
Most hosting companies responsible for spam have AUPs which condem mass unsolicited emailing, and yet they allow these activities to continue. Check out SpamHaus for better detail.
I was once a skeptic until I went to UUnet/MCI/WorldCom's data center in Miami to do work for a client. The center is PHUQN HUGE, I mean REALLY damn big (think on the order of a Super WalMart,) and yet only about 1/3 has cabinets for equipment. The rest is unoccupied air-conditioned space. (Keep in mind that the back half of the 1/3 of the building is for peering equipment.)
While I was waiting for Server 2000 to install on one of her machines, I took a stroll around the other rows of cabinets, which were mostly empty. In the ones which had equipment, there were numerous servers with drive lights a-blazing and network acitivity lights which never blinked silent. I chuckled to myself "I wonder how many of these machines are sending spam?" Hell, one of the servers had its monitor up and a locked Advanced Server 2000 with the machine name of "OPTIN-" with some digits.
Anyway, my suspicions were confirmed when I found out that the entire data center is now listed in SPEWS.
Nearly a year after my trip, I determined that a recently implemented poorly designed feedback page was allowing massive amounts of email to be sent from one of her servers. I made them lock it down as quickly as possible. In the meantime they received notice of their AUP violation, and that to continue operations they would need to "upgrade" their service contract.
"Upgrade" indeed. I have not heard the results of the "negotiations." My advice to the client: find a new hosting provider, even if she has to go with a locally owned and operated outfit. If she continues to pay MCI/UUnut/WorldCom for services, she is helping to subsidize the clogging of our inboxes and theft of others' server resources.
I'm not such a skeptic now. I cannot find more concrete proof of "pink contracts".
I've been interested in an album for a while, so I went to the record store to listen to the samples they have (scan the UPC, listen to the sample.) But they only have the same popular single from the album that gets overplayed on the radio.
That was my attempt to take the high moral road. Not feeling able to justify $16.99 that I can't get back if the rest of the album sucks, I tried to download a few other tracks to see if it was worth it. Of course the files I got were bogus, having either been purposefully damaged with garbage data at specific parts (same time in each file,) or about 20 seconds of the popular single repeated for the duration of the file.
So fuck 'em. No sample for me, no money from me. I'll just listen to the one song on the radio until we all get sick of it, and wait until I run into the album in a pawn shop for $5.
Slashdot Mirror
I recall reading rumors of a blind fella who could play MunchMan on the TI-99/4 just by listening to the sounds in the background of the game.
While my experience is no where near that in-depth, I do remember that the computer made distinct sounds when performing certain tasks, such as reading GROM, initializing, running BASIC programs (I recall that some statements also have distinct sounds as well.)
Since then I have been able to detect certain sounds from my machines which indicate normal operations; to some extent I think we all do, just as we do with cars to "know" that something isn't right. And it's been pretty consistent through all of my computers: Commodore 64, 128D, Atari 800XL, various Amigas (amazing things heard by holding your ear to the A500 power supply,) many desktop PCs and notebooks. Even some console systems generate sounds under operation (an old NES on my shelf with a bad filter cap is good for this.)
I'm curious to know what correlations between design type, grounding, processor architecture, and other factors exist for this. Might be worth investigating like this chap did, should I find the time to do so.
However, you might notice that at least one critical advisory that affected Windows 98 never had a patch released through Windows Update or for download.
The ASN.1 vulnerability affects Windows 98, but MS would only release the patch to you if you had a contract or called them about it. See here. How many people are going to call MS about it? How many Windows 98 machines are now operating on the Internet blissfully, ignorantly vulnerable?
Absolute hogwash. I plan to traumatize my children in many different ways, and this just adds another angle to my approach. This is how I plan to weed out the losers in my spawn; those who lack the emotional fortitude to survive a 1337 name and the various other mental tortures incurred by an upbringing of my design will fail in life. And too damn bad. You gotta be tough to survive in this world, and I will only produce children that will rule the world, or have a complete meltdown and not get in the way of others.
What a phuqtard.
I will throw in my hat and say "ME, TOO."
:) I habitually install gcc, bison, flex, and a number of other packages on a new system. Then I go to work compiling SSH, Apache with PHP, MySQL, and whatever else.
I work in Solaris and find myself frequenting SunFreeware for packages -- mostly for things to compile software
On occassion I find a useful package that someone has put together and install it. If I am happy with how it runs, I may look into compiling it myself, or perhaps even leave it be. Packages also come in VERY handy at times when I am having problems compiling something and am in a pinch or just damned tired of messing.
Presently, I'm working on a test environment on which I can build packages for distribution to others machines that I admin. Once the work is done, there's little sense to do it multiple times.
Something else that comes to mind mirrors what another posted; non-time sensitive, delayed Internet access. Again, similar to something like FidoNet.
As a thrown out, chaotic system this doesn't seem all that useful. But put a bunch of access points with cache-and-relay software on the road, PDAs and other mobile devices with the client for that system could deliver email to other messages to the AP, which would then cache and deliver the messages when in contact with an Internet uplink. The return might be a PITA, though, since all APs would have to cache the reply.
It seems akin to reversing the role of the AP and client; moving AP, stationary client. Or even better, moving AP and moving client. It's a roaming WiFi orgy, and just needs the right software to manage it.
I would like to see something like this proliferate through heavily censored countries. Especially if APs could exchange caching information when in range with each other. That would ensure that if one poor unlucky soul got caught with such a back pack, the information will still make it out or back in. Good encryption will also be a must in this case, since the Goons will want to disect it as much as possible.
Which brings up random political thoughts, mostly curiousity as to the real long-term benefits a country believes it will gain by oppressing its peoples rather than allowing free thought and information exchange. I guess it would almost be like an organization that pursues people for trading creative works of others so that the producers of such works might become more well known. But I digress.
And who among us would like to take the time to teach my mom Linux? Not I. I do not have the time nor the patience. It was fairly easy to teach her to not trust attachments, use a virus scanner, and to install updates when Windows says "There are updates ready to install". Amazingly, neither of my parents have ever contracted a virus.
A think a better solution might just be to take computer away from those who are incapable of, or refuse to, learn to avoid the larger "gotchyas" of technology. You know, like they do with guns and cars.
Hardly comparable. You cannot realistically compare random criminal acts against which there is little to no defense to contracting an email virus -- which is defensible.
When I lived in a small town I slept with my windows and front door open, and the flimsy screen door sometimes latched. When I moved into a bigger city with a more random populous and higher frequency of crime I stopped such behavior.
It's called prevention. An ounce of which (updates and antivirus) is worth a pound of cure (new email client, etc.)
Along side YAM on Amiga, I've been using Windows NT/2000 with OE, and now Windows XP with Outlook 2003, and combinations thereof since 1997 and have never once contracted a virus. And working for an ISP during those times I received a shytload of them in my email.
How did I accomplish this seemingly tremendous feat? Windows Update (*gasp*) and Norton AntiVirus (but now AVG v7.) (Well, that and an exercise of common sense of which even my parents are now capable.) I have also had HTML rendering turned off since the option appeared in OE6, as well as in Outlook 2003.
Amazing. Should I go down in history? Seriously, NEVER gotten a Windows virus. But, perhaps one day it will happen. When it does, I'll slap my forehead and say something like "Well, I'll be damned" as I recover my formerly virus-free system from System Restore, and if that doesn't work then I'll reload Windows from an image I made when I last loaded the system and recover all my lost data from an automatic backup made early that morning.
I might even shed a tear for the few emails that I lost between the backup and the virus. Boo hoo.
Actually, the entire system was clocked against the 28.something MHz custom chips for synchronizing with NTSC video. (Different MHz used for PAL machines, blah.)
The 28MHz clock divided down to 14MHz and 7MHz, the former which was the video clock and the later used for the 68000. This made the system perfect for Genlock use. Similar in reason to why most CD player processors ran at 88.2kHz -- double the 44.1kHz sample rate of a CD.
It had nothing to do with intentionally crippling the system. That didn't happen until much later in Commodore/Amiga's history with the development of the AGA and never-released AAA chipsets, Zorro III bus problems, and others (should read Dave Haynie's document collection sometime. It's scary.)
Where are you finding your board specs? I was able to oc my C64 way back when (much to the shigrin of VIC-II ;) because of my extensive knowledge of the mainboard. Having the schematics in a SAMS book didn't hurt that endeavour. But I'm having a difficult time finding schematics for NES, et al.
OH YEAH! Saddly, I have a collection of Sim City for just about every computer I own... C64, Amiga, PC. The only SimCity missing is for the TI-99/4A.
:)
Oh, shyt... I smell a project coming on...
I am glad to see this as a root post. Anyone who has ever dug into the internals of the Amiga, Mac, or Atari ST hardware has found that moving to faster 680x0 CPUs did not affect game speed, only the amount of lag (we called it "bog") in a game.
;) Hell, we might still be able to see that just for kicks.
I have nearly two decades of experience with the 680x0 CPUs in the Amiga systems. I remember being absolutely thrilled when Sega used the 68000 CPU in the Genesis. I hacked an original unit which had the 68-pin package with a 68010. Honestly, I do not remember the full results, but I recall I was still able to play the majority of my collection (two carts at the time, hahahaha.)
I also toyed with the idea to replace the 68000 with an MTec 68020 accelerator pulled from my Amiga 500. I never tried it, and I still am not so sure it would have worked anyway. If the AmigaOS was a little less hard-wired to the Amiga hardware architecture, given a little work, we might could have seen AmigaOS running on a Genny
Having gone from 68000 to 68040 in all its discernable steps (I still dream of a 68060/PPC accelerator for my A4000,) I have been able to bring all of my games with me. The only problem I have is with expected timing of the OCS chipset versus the AGA chipset. But there are a number of great hard drive installers which over come this, as well as system "degraders" which place the computer in a state almost identical to the original Amiga hardware.
In any case, I'm inspired by this article and look forward to dropping a 12MHz clock generator in my Sega II (provided its CPU will support it.)
(climbing up on soap box) It is also worth mentioning that us old-hat gamers take a lot of shit for being so nostalgic and blah blah blah, aching for an era long-past. I got news for those who cast stones, many of those games were FUN, and down-right phuqn great. I will not say that none of my collections are nostalgic -- I have a number of Atari 2600 carts which I never played then and do not play now other than for testing, simply because they are Atari. But the majority of the games I collect (Amiga, Atari, Sega, NES, TI, C64, and others) WERE fun, and are STILL FUN.
How many people are still playing a "dead" console because the games rocked and you cannot get them for "modern" consoles? PS1 is almost 10 years old, and yet it still has a large following. I bet in 10 years there will still be a large faction of people playing the original XBox because some of the titles will not be available on newer consoles, or just will not play the same. (I do wonder how game play of XBox 1 games will be on the XBox 2...)
Well, enough of that.
END OF LINE
Later statement will reveal that their Windows 2000 Server VPN fell victim to an exploit of the six-month old ASN.1 vulnerability, which their automatic update hadn't fixed yet. Ergo, Microsoft is responsible for the leak of their own source code :)
hehehe I just saw that shortly after you did and in a fit of rage posted the same thing. :)
Experts: Vicious worm 'Linux war' weapon
Excerpted from the article posted 12:40PM EST:
Below is feedback I sent to them in response:
Anti-virus vendor: One in 12 e-mails infected
Yeah, and 10 out of 12 are spam!
No really.
HEY, MICROSOFT... BLOW ME.
ummmm, that's funny... I'm not expecting company at this hour...
Give up the domain. Great. So Microsoft still gives the poor kid the shaft. There's no violation here. Personally, I'd tell Microsoft to shove it up its ass.
MCSE training? Did he really commit such a heinous act to warrant this kind of attrition? Seriously, how about training AND testing?
Buncha bullshit IMHO. I guess he should start taking rides from strangers who offer him candy, too.
Sorry. Shove it, Microsoft. This poor kid is no harm to you, and neither is his domain. And this "settlement" might be a great way to turn him against you forever.
Being the nice, trusting fella I am, I would *like* to give Big Blue the benefit of the doubt on this, if only from the past.
;) (Sorry)
In the 80's, IBM learned that screwing customers could only get them so far, and it eventually lost its place as THE elite vendor.
Perhaps learning from its past, IBM could embrace openness, realizing that a company can enjoy a much longer lived empire by making its subjects happy, rather than the short term "rape-and-pillage" approach which just leaves everyone broke, dazed, really pissed off, and without a ride home.
And who knows... maybe they really have OS/2 burried in a deep dark secret place (an Area 51 of the tech world) fully functional and with working drivers, just waiting for Microsoft to slip up, and then BAM! Instant revolution! The streets will flow with blood! BUWAHAHAHA
The article mentions tweaking the LD_LIBRARY_PATH...
I was told a long time ago by a number of people I considered to be Solaris gurus -- not to mention in a number of books, Sun docs, etc. -- that the LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable was not only heading towards total deprecation, but introduced a system-wide security issue.
In its stead, we were supposed to use the "crle" command to set our library paths.
On all of my boxes I use crle and not LD_LIBRARY_PATH and everything works as expected.
Any pro developers or Solaris technical folks that can comment on this?
For the same reason we compared 32-bit and 16-bit. Why Amiga users argued with Windows users. :)
But really, if we don't have comparisons like these then it's harder to justify the migration, and it's also difficult for the general public to gauge progress in the development of 64-bit technology in both software and hardware.
But you should also remember that the prolific market is SMB (Joe Businessman,) which will continue to use freely/cheaply available software such as gcc. If these markets do not see the value in moving to 64-bit and beyond, then we could potentially be stuck with exorbitantly priced 64-bit boxes languishing with an uncertain future. Think about what happened with similar technology in the past. IDE vs SCSI. Parallel vs any other better data bus. (It absolutely irked me that a pp-Zip drive could bring a considerable FAST computer to a stand-still.) And the list continues.
I accept this article as dumbed down a bit for the lower end, non-guru user who is wooed by the 64-bit "revolution" but not technically saavy enough to understand the "32-bit faster than 64-bit" comments that continue to surface in many forums. If bean counters and cheap tech workers can be made to understand that there truly ARE benefits in 64-bit technology, then progress will not be held in place by beating the 32-bit horse to death -- even if it does run at hellaspeeds.
How many times have we slapped around these types of people with our new technology trout only to hear "Yeah, but $OLD_TECHNOLOGY is STILL being developed, and it's cheap. Why should we bother with $NEW_TECHNOLOGY." Yeah yeah, I know that technically 64-bit isn't NEW, but to these guys...
Most hosting companies responsible for spam have AUPs which condem mass unsolicited emailing, and yet they allow these activities to continue. Check out SpamHaus for better detail.
I was once a skeptic until I went to UUnet/MCI/WorldCom's data center in Miami to do work for a client. The center is PHUQN HUGE, I mean REALLY damn big (think on the order of a Super WalMart,) and yet only about 1/3 has cabinets for equipment. The rest is unoccupied air-conditioned space. (Keep in mind that the back half of the 1/3 of the building is for peering equipment.)
While I was waiting for Server 2000 to install on one of her machines, I took a stroll around the other rows of cabinets, which were mostly empty. In the ones which had equipment, there were numerous servers with drive lights a-blazing and network acitivity lights which never blinked silent. I chuckled to myself "I wonder how many of these machines are sending spam?" Hell, one of the servers had its monitor up and a locked Advanced Server 2000 with the machine name of "OPTIN-" with some digits.
Anyway, my suspicions were confirmed when I found out that the entire data center is now listed in SPEWS.
Nearly a year after my trip, I determined that a recently implemented poorly designed feedback page was allowing massive amounts of email to be sent from one of her servers. I made them lock it down as quickly as possible. In the meantime they received notice of their AUP violation, and that to continue operations they would need to "upgrade" their service contract.
"Upgrade" indeed. I have not heard the results of the "negotiations." My advice to the client: find a new hosting provider, even if she has to go with a locally owned and operated outfit. If she continues to pay MCI/UUnut/WorldCom for services, she is helping to subsidize the clogging of our inboxes and theft of others' server resources.
I'm not such a skeptic now. I cannot find more concrete proof of "pink contracts".
I've been interested in an album for a while, so I went to the record store to listen to the samples they have (scan the UPC, listen to the sample.) But they only have the same popular single from the album that gets overplayed on the radio.
That was my attempt to take the high moral road. Not feeling able to justify $16.99 that I can't get back if the rest of the album sucks, I tried to download a few other tracks to see if it was worth it. Of course the files I got were bogus, having either been purposefully damaged with garbage data at specific parts (same time in each file,) or about 20 seconds of the popular single repeated for the duration of the file.
So fuck 'em. No sample for me, no money from me. I'll just listen to the one song on the radio until we all get sick of it, and wait until I run into the album in a pawn shop for $5.