Yes, I read in TFA that it won't satisfy critics. Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group was quoted as saying so, and he sounds authoritative and trustworthy enough. I wonder if he would recommend I purchase any Microsoft products in the light of this protocol documentation release. He might be a good, unbiased person to ask about that.
At Google we are committed to organizing the world's conversation. Our GPhone (or Google Telephone in Europe) will be entirely free, as will its service plan, so long as you agree to hear targeted ads during your conversations. This works in much the same way that GMail or GoogleMail parses your e-mail text for its ads. GPhone ads will be audio ads, akin to radio ads but targeted using keywords taken from your verbal conversation, and with the option to call the sponsor. If you call a friend and mention that you'd like to make vacation plans, for example, you may hear several brief ads for travel agencies, with the option to call each agency. When the ads are finished (or your convenient parallel-call to book an exciting Alaskan cruise is finished) you will be returned to the conversation with your friend, who will have waited patiently for you. Even more exciting is that all of your past conversations will be searchable, using Google's innovative new audio indexing algorithms.
Things are different these days. The main thing you get from being a paying customer of Red Hat is long-term stability (i.e., packages stay relatively the same for years, aside from bugfixes), patch rollout, and support from both Red Hat and other vendors. You're probably not in their ideal audience anymore, since general users who want a good free desktop were pointed to Fedora when that project was created from RH9 a few years ago. Now the company's audience consists almost exclusively of corporate types who want support from Red Hat, or who run software that is certified to run on Red Hat but is not guaranteed to work on much else (such as Oracle). Your distro of choice, righteous though it may be, wouldn't suit that audience very well because if there were problems, there would be no one to blame.
I'm not entirely sure this is true. Didn't God ask Abraham to set his son on fire? And didn't God play the situation entirely seriously right up until the last second, when he said something to the tune of, 'No, I was actually just testing you. A lamb would be fine.' Endless evidence for evolution and the extreme age of the Earth could be construed as a test of our faith in a literal interpretation of the Bible, just as 'Burn your son' was a test of Abraham in the Old Testament. The Bible itself provides plenty of fuel for the conservative, wacko interpretations that you're rightfully criticizing.
Not at all. The fossils are real, but the dinosaurs co-existed with humans relatively recently, probably between the time when God created the Earth and the middle ages - and some dinosaurs probably still exist today. I can prove all of this because it's written in an old book. It's also written plainly in the Dinosaur article on Conservapedia.
(I'm thinking of signing up as a Conservapedia editor purely to expand on articles like these.)
I have to admit to being amazed that telnetd is turned on at all in an installation of Solaris. In any Linux distro you have to enable it - heck, you usually have to do some digging for telnet and install it.
I remember a couple years ago in my role as a Linux admin I had to help an outside vendor access a specialized Solaris box one of our research groups used, and they wanted telnet access to it. They were shocked (and remember, this was only a couple years ago) that my network team wouldn't put an exception on our firewall so they could access it. I explained the problem with Telnet, and told them it wasn't even worth our arguing for it, and also asked if they could come in via SSH instead. None of them were familiar with SSH.
I know Solaris has an advanced kernel, is well designed, the creme de la creme, et cetera. But I can't help but feel that the pace of innovation and progress is a lot faster in the free/OSS world where improvements get added similarly across many distributions quite quickly.
I got a copy of this via e-mail this morning. I must say, it was nice to hear back from Number 10. I know they've had problems with the online petitions and I had worried that a potentially useful system like this might be abused, and/or ignored by Blair - particularly since some of the online petitions asked for silly (but funny) things like having the prime minister make the petitioner a cup of tea (that one was rejected because it was 'outside the remit or powers of the Prime Minister and Government', but not before it gathered a lot of signatures). Getting an e-mail acknowledging the patent issue and explaining Labour's policy was reassuring. From a democratic standpoint, and because it shows corruption of the patent process in Europe hasn't hit to the depths of the US.
You can have a privacy-protecting, DRM-free, open source system that also has good security - these goals are not mutually exclusive. A few years ago Apple implemented a sudo workalike for OS X that lets you run a system as a normal user; the so-called 'administrative' Mac user is not really one with root privileges, but is just allowed to sudo if you provide authentication. Many UNIX flavors and and Linux distributions had this as a configurable option for years, but after OS X some common Linux distros (Ubuntu comes to mind) started implementing a nearly identical configuration and integrating it with the GUI. Microsoft would have been wise to emulate this as well, as it's extremely easy to use, and relies on existing authentication models, but prevents you from messing up your system.
This is just an industry best-practice, well implemented by everyone else but ignored by Microsoft. The 'elitist' you are referring to might seem elite to you because he thinks like a sysadmin.
I run my own resolver, too. In fact everyone runs their own resolver. The resolver is the bit of the DNS infrastructure that runs on client machines and is responsible for performing lookups. Every computer that can access the Internet tubes has a resolver on it.
As I understand it, it's not just Google Mail here in the UK, but throughout all of the EU, since it's actually a German company that owns the Gmail trademark here.
Funny, I handed out my first invitation to another prospective user (my wife) just three days ago. I have 99 left, and don't need them.
With Apple's dominance of this particular market, there is still no guarantee whether Wal-mart will have any success with this program.
Apple dominance? While it's a fair bet that they sell a lot more movies through iTMS than any other vendors sell through through similar services, this industry is still extremely young - too young to declare a dominant vendor so early in the game. Let's table this and take up the discussion again in two years, when the positions of Netflix, Apple, Blockbuster, Wal-Mart, Target, and other future players will be more clear.
Now if you'll excuse me I have some torrent downloads to check on.
Um... has anyone considered that the.um domain might be popular amongst Slashdotters? They have a tendency to start posts with those letters. Heck, I'll maintain it.
That may have been the original purpose of the lawsuit. But IBM has the cash and the legal expertise to make anyone who threatens them like this very sorry. Case in point: SCO is very sorry. Those of us who have been reading about this lawsuit from day one have been grinning from ear to ear from day one as well, but the past few months have been particularly entertaining. Here's hoping no one buys SCO. Ever.
Have another look at TFA. The government commissioned both an ActiveX control and a Netscape plugin, since those were the two major browsers at the time. Of course, the NS plugin became abandonware. So they did try to be impartial, just not open. Thus illustrating the importance of 'open.' As someone mentioned above, I have newfound respect for what Massachusetts is doing.
I live in Britain as well, but I'm a US citizen. I'm not sure if your country is going to the dogs, but looking at Westminster everything seems normal from my cultural perspective. Are the MPs not normally partisan jerks who lie during corruption investigations?
If Windows sucks soooo much, how come more people are familiar with it than Mac OS X?
I get a kick out of the article's quoted example. To me, popularity has always been irrelevant, and instead the trustworthyness and utility of the OS renders its popularity meaningless. Again, this is only IMHO. But as an analogy, which is the better car: the 1995 Chevy Cavalier or a contemporary BMW? By this guy's argument, the Cavalier is superior because it is far more popular. And you know, from the standpoint of the software market and what decisions the market as a whole will likely make, Vista probably is "better" in that it will meet more people's needs. But I've always found this argument extremely simpleminded in any other context than market-speak. And let's face it: there are other contexts than the market. Sometimes it doesn't seem that way, because technical arguments about this subject almost always descend down the market/popularity track. Many people can't resist.
Anyway, that's only one problem I have with this debate. The other is the false dichotomy. Why aren't free desktops in the article? Are there any US citzens here who like neither the Democrats nor the Republicans? Or ice cream flavors that are neither chocolate nor vanilla? Or operating systems besides OS X and Windows?
Even better than shouting down potentially valid arguments that are nevertheless dangerous ideas, let's all plug our ears and LALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALA!! !!!!!!
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I read in TFA that it won't satisfy critics. Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group was quoted as saying so, and he sounds authoritative and trustworthy enough. I wonder if he would recommend I purchase any Microsoft products in the light of this protocol documentation release. He might be a good, unbiased person to ask about that.
You're talking about riding bikes everywhere, right? Go back to China!
From a leaked press release:
Things are different these days. The main thing you get from being a paying customer of Red Hat is long-term stability (i.e., packages stay relatively the same for years, aside from bugfixes), patch rollout, and support from both Red Hat and other vendors. You're probably not in their ideal audience anymore, since general users who want a good free desktop were pointed to Fedora when that project was created from RH9 a few years ago. Now the company's audience consists almost exclusively of corporate types who want support from Red Hat, or who run software that is certified to run on Red Hat but is not guaranteed to work on much else (such as Oracle). Your distro of choice, righteous though it may be, wouldn't suit that audience very well because if there were problems, there would be no one to blame.
Yeah, we're all tired this month. Zero-day, shmero day.
I'm not entirely sure this is true. Didn't God ask Abraham to set his son on fire? And didn't God play the situation entirely seriously right up until the last second, when he said something to the tune of, 'No, I was actually just testing you. A lamb would be fine.' Endless evidence for evolution and the extreme age of the Earth could be construed as a test of our faith in a literal interpretation of the Bible, just as 'Burn your son' was a test of Abraham in the Old Testament. The Bible itself provides plenty of fuel for the conservative, wacko interpretations that you're rightfully criticizing.
Not at all. The fossils are real, but the dinosaurs co-existed with humans relatively recently, probably between the time when God created the Earth and the middle ages - and some dinosaurs probably still exist today. I can prove all of this because it's written in an old book. It's also written plainly in the Dinosaur article on Conservapedia.
(I'm thinking of signing up as a Conservapedia editor purely to expand on articles like these.)
To Being! Finally, to Being!
I have to admit to being amazed that telnetd is turned on at all in an installation of Solaris. In any Linux distro you have to enable it - heck, you usually have to do some digging for telnet and install it.
I remember a couple years ago in my role as a Linux admin I had to help an outside vendor access a specialized Solaris box one of our research groups used, and they wanted telnet access to it. They were shocked (and remember, this was only a couple years ago) that my network team wouldn't put an exception on our firewall so they could access it. I explained the problem with Telnet, and told them it wasn't even worth our arguing for it, and also asked if they could come in via SSH instead. None of them were familiar with SSH.
I know Solaris has an advanced kernel, is well designed, the creme de la creme, et cetera. But I can't help but feel that the pace of innovation and progress is a lot faster in the free/OSS world where improvements get added similarly across many distributions quite quickly.
I got a copy of this via e-mail this morning. I must say, it was nice to hear back from Number 10. I know they've had problems with the online petitions and I had worried that a potentially useful system like this might be abused, and/or ignored by Blair - particularly since some of the online petitions asked for silly (but funny) things like having the prime minister make the petitioner a cup of tea (that one was rejected because it was 'outside the remit or powers of the Prime Minister and Government', but not before it gathered a lot of signatures). Getting an e-mail acknowledging the patent issue and explaining Labour's policy was reassuring. From a democratic standpoint, and because it shows corruption of the patent process in Europe hasn't hit to the depths of the US.
You can have a privacy-protecting, DRM-free, open source system that also has good security - these goals are not mutually exclusive. A few years ago Apple implemented a sudo workalike for OS X that lets you run a system as a normal user; the so-called 'administrative' Mac user is not really one with root privileges, but is just allowed to sudo if you provide authentication. Many UNIX flavors and and Linux distributions had this as a configurable option for years, but after OS X some common Linux distros (Ubuntu comes to mind) started implementing a nearly identical configuration and integrating it with the GUI. Microsoft would have been wise to emulate this as well, as it's extremely easy to use, and relies on existing authentication models, but prevents you from messing up your system.
This is just an industry best-practice, well implemented by everyone else but ignored by Microsoft. The 'elitist' you are referring to might seem elite to you because he thinks like a sysadmin.
Fair enough. Ignorance leads to impulsive comments. :)
I run my own resolver, too. In fact everyone runs their own resolver. The resolver is the bit of the DNS infrastructure that runs on client machines and is responsible for performing lookups. Every computer that can access the Internet tubes has a resolver on it.
"You are learning about a severe operating system vulnerability. Cancel, or allow?"
As I understand it, it's not just Google Mail here in the UK, but throughout all of the EU, since it's actually a German company that owns the Gmail trademark here.
Funny, I handed out my first invitation to another prospective user (my wife) just three days ago. I have 99 left, and don't need them.
Apple dominance? While it's a fair bet that they sell a lot more movies through iTMS than any other vendors sell through through similar services, this industry is still extremely young - too young to declare a dominant vendor so early in the game. Let's table this and take up the discussion again in two years, when the positions of Netflix, Apple, Blockbuster, Wal-Mart, Target, and other future players will be more clear.
Now if you'll excuse me I have some torrent downloads to check on.
Um ... has anyone considered that the .um domain might be popular amongst Slashdotters? They have a tendency to start posts with those letters. Heck, I'll maintain it.
That may have been the original purpose of the lawsuit. But IBM has the cash and the legal expertise to make anyone who threatens them like this very sorry. Case in point: SCO is very sorry. Those of us who have been reading about this lawsuit from day one have been grinning from ear to ear from day one as well, but the past few months have been particularly entertaining. Here's hoping no one buys SCO. Ever.
Mod parent down! He mentioned plain text. He insulted PDFs! He lies! He liiiiiiieeees!
Have another look at TFA. The government commissioned both an ActiveX control and a Netscape plugin, since those were the two major browsers at the time. Of course, the NS plugin became abandonware. So they did try to be impartial, just not open. Thus illustrating the importance of 'open.' As someone mentioned above, I have newfound respect for what Massachusetts is doing.
I think most Slashdotters already know what 10 Downing Street is. But what's the 'White House' place you're comparing it to?
I live in Britain as well, but I'm a US citizen. I'm not sure if your country is going to the dogs, but looking at Westminster everything seems normal from my cultural perspective. Are the MPs not normally partisan jerks who lie during corruption investigations?
I get a kick out of the article's quoted example. To me, popularity has always been irrelevant, and instead the trustworthyness and utility of the OS renders its popularity meaningless. Again, this is only IMHO. But as an analogy, which is the better car: the 1995 Chevy Cavalier or a contemporary BMW? By this guy's argument, the Cavalier is superior because it is far more popular. And you know, from the standpoint of the software market and what decisions the market as a whole will likely make, Vista probably is "better" in that it will meet more people's needs. But I've always found this argument extremely simpleminded in any other context than market-speak. And let's face it: there are other contexts than the market. Sometimes it doesn't seem that way, because technical arguments about this subject almost always descend down the market/popularity track. Many people can't resist.
Anyway, that's only one problem I have with this debate. The other is the false dichotomy. Why aren't free desktops in the article? Are there any US citzens here who like neither the Democrats nor the Republicans? Or ice cream flavors that are neither chocolate nor vanilla? Or operating systems besides OS X and Windows?
Even better than shouting down potentially valid arguments that are nevertheless dangerous ideas, let's all plug our ears and LALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALALA!! !!!!!!
Wrong! One. Word. Sentences. Disagree?