Come on, guys, pigs are sensitive, intelligent creatures. Some say they're as smart as dogs. And, they have far too much personal dignity to sleep with Darl. They might devour him, of course, as anyone who's seen the movie "Snatch" can attest. But sleep with him??? Gawd, no.
Here's my take on this; I'll admit up front that I'm not an expert, and these opinions are just opinions.
First of all, there are loads of distros out there. So if one or two distros go really corporate, paying less attention to home users and hobbyists, who cares? Want intellectual freedom and a progressive stance? Use Slackware or Debian instead. You can download them for free. You might have to do a little more RTFM'ing, and have to learn how to build your own firewalls, etc, but isn't the acquisition of knowledge supposed to be good for you? Besides, a home-grown firewall tends to be a little tighter than the "one size fits all" approach taken by corporate providers.
Then there's another thing to consider: corporate Linux providers are doing research and improving their products. Any changes they make to GPL'ed tools have to be released to the rest of us, so they're going to be contributing. Overall, this will be good for the community.
Finally, the more Linux is adopted by Big Business(tm), the more likely it is we'll be able to use Linux both at home and at work. And, THAT is a Good Thing.
I'll grant you that; where I work, we're only allowed to use Windows tools. For the past two years, we've had to use VB6, MTS (some servers), COM+ (other servers), and ASP on various versions of IIS. Now we're moving to.Net, and it's like night and day -- everything, and I mean everything, works much better. Windows 2000 seemed okay overall, although I had some patching problems recently (it seems they may be due to a conflict between windows and Norton Internet Security). Early versions of XP supposedly sucked, although I hadn't tried any, but I hear that it's improving over time.
Still, I think you'll agree that Linux and FreeBSD are much more stable, and more worry-free than Windows has ever been. Windows still needs a lot of work. What I think they really need to do is drop the legacy codebase, and write a Unix-based O/S the way Apple did, with a windows layer on top of it. This has been suggested many times, but Microsoft hasn't tried it yet.
Why keep struggling with a faulty legacy codebase when you can pick up a top-shelf, stable one under the BSD license for nothing? It would take much less work to turn that into Windows 2004 than to actually WRITE Windows 2004 from the legacy codebase...
I don't think this would help. Windows is saddled with tons of bad legacy code, and the whole system is architectured around it. You'd have to do a ground up redesign to get true security. That's a whole lot of work...
There won't be a deluge. The very architecture of Unix/Linux makes it difficult to create a virus or worm like the ones currently spoiling the days of Windows users. I'm not saying it's impossible to write a Linux virus, of course there have already been a couple of them. But it's much more difficult. Virus writers tend to go for Microsoft's low-hanging fruit, not the lofty domain of linux up at the top of the tree.;)
By the way: Just since you mentioned it, I did a little digging online (it's been a while since I was in a classroom, so I figured, why not doublecheck?). Although slavery was one of the reasons for the war, it wasn't the only reason or even the main one. The reasons seem to be:
1. Tariffs which the South felt were directed at them, semi-spitefully, which benefitted the manufacturing states in the North while harming the agrarian states in the South (what I'd originally said).
2. The South felt it had no voice in American government because it didn't have enough population at the time to out-vote the more populous North, so it felt it was stuck in an unfair political situation.
3. Sectionalism, which seemed to be people pushing the idea of groups of states acting as a unit, with the breakup of the union into sections, etc. I wasn't too clear on the explanation I found, but this seems to be the jist of it.
4. State's rights, which the South felt weren't being upheld by the new federal goverment (i.e. a state's rights to make its own laws, free from interference).
5. A desire for independence from the North, who the South felt would never understand their way of life (and, here, slavery was definitely part of the situation).
6. The fact that Lincoln pledged to keep the new western territories free of slavery, which made him look definitely abolitionist (therefore, not South-friendly).
So, slavery was part of it, but NOT the whole story, as far as I can see. Perhaps we're BOTH right, and neither of us was ENTIRELY right.;)
That's pretty interesting, and I'll grant you that slavery was a big issue at the time, with most of the North clamoring for abolition (the North, like most of Europe and England, had banned slavery in 1804 and wanted the South to follow suit). However, what actually sparked the secession was the tariff issue. And, the North DID offer the South the chance to keep their slaves if they'd give up on secession. The South told the North to get stuffed, and Sherman marched to the sea... The main reason the North won was their naval dominance. They were able to sail right up the mississippi and start another front. Sherman moved from the Mississippi to the Atlantic coast, destroying everything he came across.
So, no, I don't agree with you that Slavery was the main issue of the war. I'm sure it was an issue, just not the main one, and not the one that started the conflict.
Uh, no. First of all, in our current system, the people are given a choice between at most three bad candidates and a bunch of harmless independents, so they end up choosing the lesser of N evils. They don't just vote in whoever they want. They're told who they may vote for and they pick whoever seems the least dangerous (or stupid). Note that even THAT didn't work out in the last election.
Second, the civil war was fought over tariffs, not slavery. What happened was, the North was primarily a manufacturing culture, which wanted to export freely. The south was a labor-intensive agrarian culture, which wanted protective import tariffs. The north was more influential in the government, so the south didn't get its protective tariffs and started to secede, which it had a right to do under the original constitution. The Union used the slavery issue as a stick to threaten the south with, actually offering to leave them alone if they just drop their secession attempt. The south persisted in their attempt to secede, the North went to war with the South, and as a result the North A) destroyed the South's entire infrastructure and farming capability during Sherman's "march to the sea" in which they basically burned everything to the ground, and B) outlawed slavery, destroying what was left of the south's economy (which by that point was entirely labor-intensive and dependent on slavery). Then, during what southerners call "the crime of the restoration" the North "helped" restore the south in such a way that the south is TO THIS DAY economically depressed.
Now, I'm a northerner. And, if I'd been living back then, I'd have been an abolitionist (against slavery on principle and for abolition thereof). So I think the North should have taken the high ground right from the start and banned slavery outright. I'm not trying to say that the south should have been permitted to keep their slaves -- I would never take such a position. What I am saying is that the civil war, like most wars, was about money. Not slavery. Regardless of how a lot of teachers like to spin it.
I suspect that we Americans will only tolerate so much poverty. Remember, we've already fought one revolution and a civil war. It wouldn't take much of that widespread poverty and unemployment to piss people completely off and spark a really ugly New Civil War, and you know what happens then... Remember the French Revolution? "Let them eat cake" turned into "Off with her head!" pretty quickly. Ah, well. What can you do? Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it.
Actually, I used to work at a media monitoring company which took feeds directly from the AP wire, and had hundreds of people at several locations around the country clipping articles from newspapers. The way it would work, if an article came from AP, it would get dumped as text on a server and manipulated further; if it was in a paper newspaper, the article would get clipped, then pasted on a card with info about which newspaper it came from and when. Articles and cards would get aggregated and sent on to the clients. Supposedly almost every newspaper in the country was covered. Similarly, they had numbers of people whose job it was to lurk in AOL chat groups, Yahoo chat, and etc, capturing screen prints of comments about their clients. I was involved with the section that monitored chatrooms, usenet groups, websites, etc. Believe me, they're into everything. It's kind of cool and spooky at the same time. You know, they used to do work for the CIA, but their contract was ended when the CIA opened up their own in-house shop. Isn't that interesting?
It doesn't bother me, or anything, I just find it fascinating that this stuff goes on, and no one seems to have even considered the possibility that it's happening.
I think that playing through Jedi Knight II, with its first-person and third-person modes, and then playing through the third-person Obi Wan, both of which had great combat and lightsaber battles, DEFINITELY gives you the impression that the Star Wars franchise is based on first and third person shooters, although they do have role playing elements. And, if you look at the commercials for KOTOR, they show lots, and lots, of combat. But, they do NOT explain that this combat is all based on dice rolls, and that you're just watching it, not participating.
This is misleading. You get the impression you're going to be fighting with lightsabers, having a blast slicing up sith, and you go out and buy the game based on what you've been shown, because it never even occurs to you that the game might be nothing more than a glorified paper-and-dice-roll kinda thing. I mean, who on earth would ever ruin an idea of this potential by stripping out all the combat? You'd have to be nuts... Or totally evil. It's almost as bad as what they did with Aliens Vs. Predator (man, don't get me started on that one, the PC games were intense first person shooters, and the console game is a STRATEGY GAME??? WTF???).
I don't know about you, but I think this game is absolutely terrible. I was so disappointed with this game, I was crushed. I'd been looking forward to this thing for a while. And, what did I get? A game with absolutely NO real fighting at all! Sheesh. They can keep it.
Next time they come out with a game, I'm going to rent the damn thing first. LucasArts has totally blown their credibility with me.
I agree. I don't think the KOTOR box was at all honest about how the combat system worked -- I had the impression, buying it after wildly enjoying Jedi Knight II and Obi-Wan, that I'd be having lightsaber battles, mixing it up with groups of sith, etc... Instead, the manual tells me that "combat is automatic" and it's all based on some weirdo D+D type dice roll paradigm. WTF??? Then I end up spending almost all time in-game jawboning with every other character in the game! I think the most annoying was hitting on the Sith chick in the bar, and getting rejected by her. I play video games so I DON'T have to go to bars and get rejected, you know?
It's not just Microsoft. There are companies called "clipping services" which have been around for decades. They employ warehouses full of people, reading newspapers from all around the country, clipping out articles that relate to a client or set of clients. The client would get a notice mailed to him/her including the clipping and some time/date/source info. Just about every newspaper in the country is monitored.
Over the years, the clipping services expanded out, adding AP feeds, Newswire, etc. They suck articles right off the wire and store them for their customer's perusal. Then they added newsgroup and chatroom monitoring, and of course web monitoring. They use web spiders to capture the info, and databases to store it.
This is very widespread, and it's been going on for years. Do a google search on "clipping services" if you don't believe me. Anything you write online about a company who can afford the service is noticed, printed out, and sent to them by a flunky.
Why worry? It's not like you can do anything about it. So Microsoft knows that I think they suck. Big deal. Hey, Gates! You suck! See? No hitmen busting down my door, no guidos breaking my leggaggdafsafal;nfdasl'(MESSAGE TERMINATED)
Amen to that. If I could make a living doing Linux, Java, Perl, or C++ I'd be there in a heartbeat. But I live in New York, where everyone has already been laid off and most IT people are in serious trouble financially. No one is hiring. I got lucky two years ago and got a job with the state government, which was a godsend. Instead of being unemployed, now I'm making decent money (not a lot of money, but enough to live on) and all I have to do is swallow my pride a little and work with Microsoft tools. I jumped at the chance, as would anyone sensible I think.
It's not so bad. We're switching to.Net now, which is a pretty nice development platform. I'm enjoying working with it, and I don't mind working with windows as much now that I have nicer tools. I just wish patches would work more predictably, and that every worm that comes out wouldn't knock the whole network flat. It's not *that* much to ask for, you know?
Anyway, thanks for the kind words! I had tried to think of a witty comeback for the A/C's nasty "you're a whore" comment, like "I wish I WAS a whore, I could pay off my student loans then" but I kinda ran out of steam. Thanks!
"Gee, put some effort in configuring Windows too, and you'll never have this kind of trouble"
Um, I don't know about that. So much stuff is buried in layers of GUI and "click here" weirdness that it's sometimes difficult to know what CAN be configured, much less how to do it. With Linux, I can just go to/etc, and start looking for conf files. although, I guess that's not for everyone...
"Buzzz. Wrong. The.NET Framework won't be part of the system until Longhorn. Either you personally install it, or it doesn't get installed or updated automatically. The problem lies somewhere else"
Umm, NO. If you go to Windows update, you ARE offered a.Net download. It's not a "critical" update, but it IS there. All 25MB of it. Go see for yourself. My point is that if you use this update, you won't be able to install Visual Studio.Net because it'll choke, and I thought that was kinda dumb.
"Guess what? it does have one. It's part of the native IPSec service. See this tutorial [wmich.edu], and, in general, avoid Norton products like rats with bubonic plague"
Now, that is a good tip. I'm going to check it out when I get home, and I thank you for it. Now all I have to do is replace Norton Internet Security with a good antivirus program -- any suggestions? I'm thinking about McAfee...
I'm sorry -- in retrospect, my comment looks a little cold. I didn't mean it as shrewishly as it sounded.
I remember the early xf86config scripts, they scared the hell out of a guy. They were like, "If you put the wrong settings in, you'll fry your monitor". I generally responded by picking the most conservative settings I thought would work, and I never had any mishaps. I always wondered if anyone took the risk and got burned, and what that would be like. Did the monitor just stop working, or did it actually do the "sizzle, crack, pop" thing?
I knew a professor once, who told us that while he was an undergrad in a junior-level assembly language course, he managed to set his monitor on fire, so I wouldn't feel *too* bad if I were you. The prof almost got expelled for wrecking lab equipment and setting off the fire alarm. And all because he "wanted to see what would happen if he tried to draw stuff outside of the paintable area of the screen". Apparently, he blew up a bunch of capacitors or something, and became famous at that school...:)
Well, I got a tip from someone on here, in that Norton Internet Security might have screwed the pooch on a few things, so I have something to try:
1.Reinstall windows, with IIS. 2.Reinstall VB.Net 3.Go online and patch up all the way. 4.Cross fingers and reboot. 5.Try to install Norton Antivirus ONLY. I don't know if Norton Internet Security will LET me, but it's worth a shot...
Sorry if I got a little testy. This thing has been driving me nuts.:)
Well, here's my answer about the "lack of effort" jibe.
When I'm working with Linux, I'm using Slackware, which is almost 100% volunteer-built and mostly nonprofit. So, since it's more of a do-it-yourselfer linux than most, you kind of expect to have issues, and to have to research them; you're inclined to cut it a lot of slack (pardon the pun). The fact that Slackware can be acquired for free enhances one's desire to cut it some slack. The fact that it's very high quality helps also. You feel like, "Hey, these guys put all these tools together for me, for nothing. They just GAVE it to me. So, you know, if a few things go askew, and I have to do some extra work, that's ok, no hard feelings."
Contrast this with Windows. You have to pay upwards of 200 bucks for the professional edition, plus another hundred bucks just for the entry level, "standard edition" VB.Net development tools. Add about seventy bucks for Norton Internet Security, another fifty bucks for Roxio (because God forbid Microsoft offers you built-in CD-Burning tools), and so on... You've spent about four hundred and twenty five bucks just buying some basic software. Maybe I'll be forgiven for feeling that having to run around and do a lot of bullshit research just to install a fucking PATCH strains my goodwill just a tad! I'm not annoyed at you, per se. But I think that if I'm going to have to lay out almost the price of a NEW PC for some software, then the very least I should expect is for that software to work as expected without having to run around "researching". And, let's just briefly consider the difference between Linux "research" and windows "research": under Linux, you're researching how to code firewall rules, how to set up config files, etc. You're RTFM'ing, ok? Under Windows, you're digging around for arcane notes about how model A of the Sony CD-RW doesn't work with Roxio! I mean, COME ON already! It ain't the same.
BTW: I don't have a Sony CD-RW, so your Roxio tip didn't tip me off to anything. And, my Roxio WAS patched up to the current level -- and still didn't work. Nyah.
I'm not annoyed at you for basically calling me lazy and blaming me for my windows woes. That's par for the course here on Slashdot. But, I AM annoyed at Microsoft for putting out a crappy product that doesn't work as advertised. For the money they're charging, this stuff shouldn't be happening.
Actually, I do possess a D-Link hardware firewall, and I hook my laptops into it when I use 'em. However, I had thought it might be a good idea to try and install the Norton product, as it contained antivirus software, a software firewall, and so on. Feh.
So you think it might be Norton screwing me up? Huh. Well, it IS a pretty good possibility. I guess I could rely on the D-Link, and leave Norton off. Kind of a shame about the Antivirus software being integrated though. I hate throwing away that cash... Ah, well. What can you do?
P.S. I don't think you meant to say that you can't integrate a firewall with a PC; you even point out that you can create a PC firewall using Linux or a BSD. I think you meant to say you can't put a software firewall in a WINDOWS box and expect it to do anything (other than annoy you), a point with which I'd have to say I agree. I need that Unix-style kernel firewall support.
An A/C said: "Arguments 1, 2, 3 and 5 are valid. But anyone who uses a piece of software as consistently buggy and hideous as Roxio deserves whatever they get. Buy a copy of Nero"
Nero, eh? I'll have to check that out. Nothing we've done has gotten my poor mom's copy of Roxio working again. We've really given up on it. You know, I noticed while the machine was being patched, a text string flashed about fetching new Roxio files... During Windows update! I'll check Nero out and see how it works. Thanks!
That's a good question; the only things I installed on that box were: Windows 2000; IIS (not the lockdown tool, because I'm just using it locally, and not serving to the web); Visual Studio.Net (the Visual Basic Standard Edition, no bells or whistles); Roxio Easy CD Creator for CD burning; and Norton Internet Security. All I did was update Norton Internet Security, then run Windows Update. Windows update choked on Service Pack 4, and IIS died without a whimper, never to work again (can't even call up the administrative app). And, YES, I did try working with it as administrator, so it's not a permissions issue.
Note that if I put off installing Visual Studio.Net, I could get through all the Windows Updates, but then, the installation of Visual Studio.Net would fail. One of the admins at work pointed out that if you install the.Net framework, then try to install Visual Studio.Net, that won't work. VS.Net has to get installed first.
Anyway, this doesn't affect my point. My point is, I shouldn't have to worry about all this weirdo bullshit when all I want to do is install a freakin' patch and have my system still work the way it did before the patch. Ok? MY WHOLE PROBLEM with windows is that I can't install my stuff, and update my system, without parts of the system suddenly going tits-up without warning. And, I think that's a valid beef.
It doesn't matter that YOU can do it with no trouble. It should work without trouble for everyone, especially at the prices they're charging.
I don't "hate" windows because of WFP. I merely find WFP aggravating. I hate windows because windows doesn't work predictably, and frequently chokes on things it shouldn't choke on, like patches and updates. FOR EXAMPLE, I find it irritating that A) the installation of service pack 4 crashed, and B) that my IIS immediately stopped working afterwards, and C) because I now have no IIS, I can't create new Visual Studio.Net projects, so D) I can't bring work home, which E) was the only reason I set up that infernal Windows box in the first place!!! Please, explain to me why exactly windows' failure to survive this chain of events relates to a lack of knowledge or ability on my part. I promise I will pretend to find your explanation fascinating, and I'll even drink a double expresso and stay awake for the whole thing. No promises though.
Hey, remember older versions of Linux where you would configure X manually with XFree86? I bet he didn't look up his monitor's settings, and tried one of the more aggressive ones. That'll fry a monitor quickly, or so I hear. But, still -- that's his own fault, X warned him not to play too fast and loose with the settings!
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Come on, guys, pigs are sensitive, intelligent creatures. Some say they're as smart as dogs. And, they have far too much personal dignity to sleep with Darl. They might devour him, of course, as anyone who's seen the movie "Snatch" can attest. But sleep with him??? Gawd, no.
Here's my take on this; I'll admit up front that I'm not an expert, and these opinions are just opinions.
First of all, there are loads of distros out there. So if one or two distros go really corporate, paying less attention to home users and hobbyists, who cares? Want intellectual freedom and a progressive stance? Use Slackware or Debian instead. You can download them for free. You might have to do a little more RTFM'ing, and have to learn how to build your own firewalls, etc, but isn't the acquisition of knowledge supposed to be good for you? Besides, a home-grown firewall tends to be a little tighter than the "one size fits all" approach taken by corporate providers.
Then there's another thing to consider: corporate Linux providers are doing research and improving their products. Any changes they make to GPL'ed tools have to be released to the rest of us, so they're going to be contributing. Overall, this will be good for the community.
Finally, the more Linux is adopted by Big Business(tm), the more likely it is we'll be able to use Linux both at home and at work. And, THAT is a Good Thing.
I'll grant you that; where I work, we're only allowed to use Windows tools. For the past two years, we've had to use VB6, MTS (some servers), COM+ (other servers), and ASP on various versions of IIS. Now we're moving to .Net, and it's like night and day -- everything, and I mean everything, works much better. Windows 2000 seemed okay overall, although I had some patching problems recently (it seems they may be due to a conflict between windows and Norton Internet Security). Early versions of XP supposedly sucked, although I hadn't tried any, but I hear that it's improving over time.
Still, I think you'll agree that Linux and FreeBSD are much more stable, and more worry-free than Windows has ever been. Windows still needs a lot of work. What I think they really need to do is drop the legacy codebase, and write a Unix-based O/S the way Apple did, with a windows layer on top of it. This has been suggested many times, but Microsoft hasn't tried it yet.
Why keep struggling with a faulty legacy codebase when you can pick up a top-shelf, stable one under the BSD license for nothing? It would take much less work to turn that into Windows 2004 than to actually WRITE Windows 2004 from the legacy codebase...
I don't think this would help. Windows is saddled with tons of bad legacy code, and the whole system is architectured around it. You'd have to do a ground up redesign to get true security. That's a whole lot of work...
There won't be a deluge. The very architecture of Unix/Linux makes it difficult to create a virus or worm like the ones currently spoiling the days of Windows users. I'm not saying it's impossible to write a Linux virus, of course there have already been a couple of them. But it's much more difficult. Virus writers tend to go for Microsoft's low-hanging fruit, not the lofty domain of linux up at the top of the tree. ;)
By the way: Just since you mentioned it, I did a little digging online (it's been a while since I was in a classroom, so I figured, why not doublecheck?). Although slavery was one of the reasons for the war, it wasn't the only reason or even the main one. The reasons seem to be:
;)
1. Tariffs which the South felt were directed at them, semi-spitefully, which benefitted the manufacturing states in the North while harming the agrarian states in the South (what I'd originally said).
2. The South felt it had no voice in American government because it didn't have enough population at the time to out-vote the more populous North, so it felt it was stuck in an unfair political situation.
3. Sectionalism, which seemed to be people pushing the idea of groups of states acting as a unit, with the breakup of the union into sections, etc. I wasn't too clear on the explanation I found, but this seems to be the jist of it.
4. State's rights, which the South felt weren't being upheld by the new federal goverment (i.e. a state's rights to make its own laws, free from interference).
5. A desire for independence from the North, who the South felt would never understand their way of life (and, here, slavery was definitely part of the situation).
6. The fact that Lincoln pledged to keep the new western territories free of slavery, which made him look definitely abolitionist (therefore, not South-friendly).
So, slavery was part of it, but NOT the whole story, as far as I can see. Perhaps we're BOTH right, and neither of us was ENTIRELY right.
That's pretty interesting, and I'll grant you that slavery was a big issue at the time, with most of the North clamoring for abolition (the North, like most of Europe and England, had banned slavery in 1804 and wanted the South to follow suit). However, what actually sparked the secession was the tariff issue. And, the North DID offer the South the chance to keep their slaves if they'd give up on secession. The South told the North to get stuffed, and Sherman marched to the sea... The main reason the North won was their naval dominance. They were able to sail right up the mississippi and start another front. Sherman moved from the Mississippi to the Atlantic coast, destroying everything he came across.
So, no, I don't agree with you that Slavery was the main issue of the war. I'm sure it was an issue, just not the main one, and not the one that started the conflict.
Uh, no. First of all, in our current system, the people are given a choice between at most three bad candidates and a bunch of harmless independents, so they end up choosing the lesser of N evils. They don't just vote in whoever they want. They're told who they may vote for and they pick whoever seems the least dangerous (or stupid). Note that even THAT didn't work out in the last election.
Second, the civil war was fought over tariffs, not slavery. What happened was, the North was primarily a manufacturing culture, which wanted to export freely. The south was a labor-intensive agrarian culture, which wanted protective import tariffs. The north was more influential in the government, so the south didn't get its protective tariffs and started to secede, which it had a right to do under the original constitution. The Union used the slavery issue as a stick to threaten the south with, actually offering to leave them alone if they just drop their secession attempt. The south persisted in their attempt to secede, the North went to war with the South, and as a result the North A) destroyed the South's entire infrastructure and farming capability during Sherman's "march to the sea" in which they basically burned everything to the ground, and B) outlawed slavery, destroying what was left of the south's economy (which by that point was entirely labor-intensive and dependent on slavery). Then, during what southerners call "the crime of the restoration" the North "helped" restore the south in such a way that the south is TO THIS DAY economically depressed.
Now, I'm a northerner. And, if I'd been living back then, I'd have been an abolitionist (against slavery on principle and for abolition thereof). So I think the North should have taken the high ground right from the start and banned slavery outright. I'm not trying to say that the south should have been permitted to keep their slaves -- I would never take such a position. What I am saying is that the civil war, like most wars, was about money. Not slavery. Regardless of how a lot of teachers like to spin it.
I keep hearing about a new version of Perfect Dark coming out, but I never see it in the store... I hope it comes out soon. Joanna Dark! Yum!
I suspect that we Americans will only tolerate so much poverty. Remember, we've already fought one revolution and a civil war. It wouldn't take much of that widespread poverty and unemployment to piss people completely off and spark a really ugly New Civil War, and you know what happens then... Remember the French Revolution? "Let them eat cake" turned into "Off with her head!" pretty quickly. Ah, well. What can you do? Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it.
Actually, I used to work at a media monitoring company which took feeds directly from the AP wire, and had hundreds of people at several locations around the country clipping articles from newspapers. The way it would work, if an article came from AP, it would get dumped as text on a server and manipulated further; if it was in a paper newspaper, the article would get clipped, then pasted on a card with info about which newspaper it came from and when. Articles and cards would get aggregated and sent on to the clients. Supposedly almost every newspaper in the country was covered. Similarly, they had numbers of people whose job it was to lurk in AOL chat groups, Yahoo chat, and etc, capturing screen prints of comments about their clients. I was involved with the section that monitored chatrooms, usenet groups, websites, etc. Believe me, they're into everything. It's kind of cool and spooky at the same time. You know, they used to do work for the CIA, but their contract was ended when the CIA opened up their own in-house shop. Isn't that interesting?
It doesn't bother me, or anything, I just find it fascinating that this stuff goes on, and no one seems to have even considered the possibility that it's happening.
I think that playing through Jedi Knight II, with its first-person and third-person modes, and then playing through the third-person Obi Wan, both of which had great combat and lightsaber battles, DEFINITELY gives you the impression that the Star Wars franchise is based on first and third person shooters, although they do have role playing elements. And, if you look at the commercials for KOTOR, they show lots, and lots, of combat. But, they do NOT explain that this combat is all based on dice rolls, and that you're just watching it, not participating.
This is misleading. You get the impression you're going to be fighting with lightsabers, having a blast slicing up sith, and you go out and buy the game based on what you've been shown, because it never even occurs to you that the game might be nothing more than a glorified paper-and-dice-roll kinda thing. I mean, who on earth would ever ruin an idea of this potential by stripping out all the combat? You'd have to be nuts... Or totally evil. It's almost as bad as what they did with Aliens Vs. Predator (man, don't get me started on that one, the PC games were intense first person shooters, and the console game is a STRATEGY GAME??? WTF???).
I don't know about you, but I think this game is absolutely terrible. I was so disappointed with this game, I was crushed. I'd been looking forward to this thing for a while. And, what did I get? A game with absolutely NO real fighting at all! Sheesh. They can keep it.
Next time they come out with a game, I'm going to rent the damn thing first. LucasArts has totally blown their credibility with me.
I agree. I don't think the KOTOR box was at all honest about how the combat system worked -- I had the impression, buying it after wildly enjoying Jedi Knight II and Obi-Wan, that I'd be having lightsaber battles, mixing it up with groups of sith, etc... Instead, the manual tells me that "combat is automatic" and it's all based on some weirdo D+D type dice roll paradigm. WTF??? Then I end up spending almost all time in-game jawboning with every other character in the game! I think the most annoying was hitting on the Sith chick in the bar, and getting rejected by her. I play video games so I DON'T have to go to bars and get rejected, you know?
Feh. What, oh what, were they thinking???
It's not just Microsoft. There are companies called "clipping services" which have been around for decades. They employ warehouses full of people, reading newspapers from all around the country, clipping out articles that relate to a client or set of clients. The client would get a notice mailed to him/her including the clipping and some time/date/source info. Just about every newspaper in the country is monitored.
Over the years, the clipping services expanded out, adding AP feeds, Newswire, etc. They suck articles right off the wire and store them for their customer's perusal. Then they added newsgroup and chatroom monitoring, and of course web monitoring. They use web spiders to capture the info, and databases to store it.
This is very widespread, and it's been going on for years. Do a google search on "clipping services" if you don't believe me. Anything you write online about a company who can afford the service is noticed, printed out, and sent to them by a flunky.
Why worry? It's not like you can do anything about it. So Microsoft knows that I think they suck. Big deal. Hey, Gates! You suck! See? No hitmen busting down my door, no guidos breaking my leggaggdafsafal;nfdasl'(MESSAGE TERMINATED)
Amen to that. If I could make a living doing Linux, Java, Perl, or C++ I'd be there in a heartbeat. But I live in New York, where everyone has already been laid off and most IT people are in serious trouble financially. No one is hiring. I got lucky two years ago and got a job with the state government, which was a godsend. Instead of being unemployed, now I'm making decent money (not a lot of money, but enough to live on) and all I have to do is swallow my pride a little and work with Microsoft tools. I jumped at the chance, as would anyone sensible I think.
.Net now, which is a pretty nice development platform. I'm enjoying working with it, and I don't mind working with windows as much now that I have nicer tools. I just wish patches would work more predictably, and that every worm that comes out wouldn't knock the whole network flat. It's not *that* much to ask for, you know?
It's not so bad. We're switching to
Anyway, thanks for the kind words! I had tried to think of a witty comeback for the A/C's nasty "you're a whore" comment, like "I wish I WAS a whore, I could pay off my student loans then" but I kinda ran out of steam. Thanks!
"Gee, put some effort in configuring Windows too, and you'll never have this kind of trouble"
/etc, and start looking for conf files. although, I guess that's not for everyone...
.NET Framework won't be part of the system until Longhorn. Either you personally install it, or it doesn't get installed or updated automatically. The problem lies somewhere else"
.Net download. It's not a "critical" update, but it IS there. All 25MB of it. Go see for yourself. My point is that if you use this update, you won't be able to install Visual Studio .Net because it'll choke, and I thought that was kinda dumb.
Um, I don't know about that. So much stuff is buried in layers of GUI and "click here" weirdness that it's sometimes difficult to know what CAN be configured, much less how to do it. With Linux, I can just go to
"Buzzz. Wrong. The
Umm, NO. If you go to Windows update, you ARE offered a
"Guess what? it does have one. It's part of the native IPSec service. See this tutorial [wmich.edu], and, in general, avoid Norton products like rats with bubonic plague"
Now, that is a good tip. I'm going to check it out when I get home, and I thank you for it. Now all I have to do is replace Norton Internet Security with a good antivirus program -- any suggestions? I'm thinking about McAfee...
Thanks for the suggestions!
I'm sorry -- in retrospect, my comment looks a little cold. I didn't mean it as shrewishly as it sounded.
:)
I remember the early xf86config scripts, they scared the hell out of a guy. They were like, "If you put the wrong settings in, you'll fry your monitor". I generally responded by picking the most conservative settings I thought would work, and I never had any mishaps. I always wondered if anyone took the risk and got burned, and what that would be like. Did the monitor just stop working, or did it actually do the "sizzle, crack, pop" thing?
I knew a professor once, who told us that while he was an undergrad in a junior-level assembly language course, he managed to set his monitor on fire, so I wouldn't feel *too* bad if I were you. The prof almost got expelled for wrecking lab equipment and setting off the fire alarm. And all because he "wanted to see what would happen if he tried to draw stuff outside of the paintable area of the screen". Apparently, he blew up a bunch of capacitors or something, and became famous at that school...
Well, I got a tip from someone on here, in that Norton Internet Security might have screwed the pooch on a few things, so I have something to try:
:)
1.Reinstall windows, with IIS.
2.Reinstall VB.Net
3.Go online and patch up all the way.
4.Cross fingers and reboot.
5.Try to install Norton Antivirus ONLY. I don't know if Norton Internet Security will LET me, but it's worth a shot...
Sorry if I got a little testy. This thing has been driving me nuts.
Well, here's my answer about the "lack of effort" jibe.
When I'm working with Linux, I'm using Slackware, which is almost 100% volunteer-built and mostly nonprofit. So, since it's more of a do-it-yourselfer linux than most, you kind of expect to have issues, and to have to research them; you're inclined to cut it a lot of slack (pardon the pun). The fact that Slackware can be acquired for free enhances one's desire to cut it some slack. The fact that it's very high quality helps also. You feel like, "Hey, these guys put all these tools together for me, for nothing. They just GAVE it to me. So, you know, if a few things go askew, and I have to do some extra work, that's ok, no hard feelings."
Contrast this with Windows. You have to pay upwards of 200 bucks for the professional edition, plus another hundred bucks just for the entry level, "standard edition" VB.Net development tools. Add about seventy bucks for Norton Internet Security, another fifty bucks for Roxio (because God forbid Microsoft offers you built-in CD-Burning tools), and so on... You've spent about four hundred and twenty five bucks just buying some basic software. Maybe I'll be forgiven for feeling that having to run around and do a lot of bullshit research just to install a fucking PATCH strains my goodwill just a tad! I'm not annoyed at you, per se. But I think that if I'm going to have to lay out almost the price of a NEW PC for some software, then the very least I should expect is for that software to work as expected without having to run around "researching". And, let's just briefly consider the difference between Linux "research" and windows "research": under Linux, you're researching how to code firewall rules, how to set up config files, etc. You're RTFM'ing, ok? Under Windows, you're digging around for arcane notes about how model A of the Sony CD-RW doesn't work with Roxio! I mean, COME ON already! It ain't the same.
BTW: I don't have a Sony CD-RW, so your Roxio tip didn't tip me off to anything. And, my Roxio WAS patched up to the current level -- and still didn't work. Nyah.
I'm not annoyed at you for basically calling me lazy and blaming me for my windows woes. That's par for the course here on Slashdot. But, I AM annoyed at Microsoft for putting out a crappy product that doesn't work as advertised. For the money they're charging, this stuff shouldn't be happening.
Actually, I do possess a D-Link hardware firewall, and I hook my laptops into it when I use 'em. However, I had thought it might be a good idea to try and install the Norton product, as it contained antivirus software, a software firewall, and so on. Feh.
So you think it might be Norton screwing me up? Huh. Well, it IS a pretty good possibility. I guess I could rely on the D-Link, and leave Norton off. Kind of a shame about the Antivirus software being integrated though. I hate throwing away that cash... Ah, well. What can you do?
P.S. I don't think you meant to say that you can't integrate a firewall with a PC; you even point out that you can create a PC firewall using Linux or a BSD. I think you meant to say you can't put a software firewall in a WINDOWS box and expect it to do anything (other than annoy you), a point with which I'd have to say I agree. I need that Unix-style kernel firewall support.
An A/C said: "Arguments 1, 2, 3 and 5 are valid. But anyone who uses a piece of software as consistently buggy and hideous as Roxio deserves whatever they get. Buy a copy of Nero"
Nero, eh? I'll have to check that out. Nothing we've done has gotten my poor mom's copy of Roxio working again. We've really given up on it. You know, I noticed while the machine was being patched, a text string flashed about fetching new Roxio files... During Windows update! I'll check Nero out and see how it works. Thanks!
That's a good question; the only things I installed on that box were: Windows 2000; IIS (not the lockdown tool, because I'm just using it locally, and not serving to the web); Visual Studio .Net (the Visual Basic Standard Edition, no bells or whistles); Roxio Easy CD Creator for CD burning; and Norton Internet Security. All I did was update Norton Internet Security, then run Windows Update. Windows update choked on Service Pack 4, and IIS died without a whimper, never to work again (can't even call up the administrative app). And, YES, I did try working with it as administrator, so it's not a permissions issue.
.Net, I could get through all the Windows Updates, but then, the installation of Visual Studio .Net would fail. One of the admins at work pointed out that if you install the .Net framework, then try to install Visual Studio .Net, that won't work. VS.Net has to get installed first.
Note that if I put off installing Visual Studio
Anyway, this doesn't affect my point. My point is, I shouldn't have to worry about all this weirdo bullshit when all I want to do is install a freakin' patch and have my system still work the way it did before the patch. Ok? MY WHOLE PROBLEM with windows is that I can't install my stuff, and update my system, without parts of the system suddenly going tits-up without warning. And, I think that's a valid beef.
It doesn't matter that YOU can do it with no trouble. It should work without trouble for everyone, especially at the prices they're charging.
I beg your pardon!
.Net projects, so D) I can't bring work home, which E) was the only reason I set up that infernal Windows box in the first place!!! Please, explain to me why exactly windows' failure to survive this chain of events relates to a lack of knowledge or ability on my part. I promise I will pretend to find your explanation fascinating, and I'll even drink a double expresso and stay awake for the whole thing. No promises though.
I don't "hate" windows because of WFP. I merely find WFP aggravating. I hate windows because windows doesn't work predictably, and frequently chokes on things it shouldn't choke on, like patches and updates. FOR EXAMPLE, I find it irritating that A) the installation of service pack 4 crashed, and B) that my IIS immediately stopped working afterwards, and C) because I now have no IIS, I can't create new Visual Studio
Thanks for the ideas! Worth a shot. I like the file idea, I hadn't thought of that one. Thanks!
Hey, remember older versions of Linux where you would configure X manually with XFree86? I bet he didn't look up his monitor's settings, and tried one of the more aggressive ones. That'll fry a monitor quickly, or so I hear. But, still -- that's his own fault, X warned him not to play too fast and loose with the settings!