WTF are you talking about?
"maxed out the SQL zoom editor" WTF is a zoom editor in Filemaker? Yes I know filemaker inside and out and it's a different animal from anything else going. There are no "tables" per se, no variables they're called "global fields" and primary keys are refered to as indexing on/off. WTF are modules in Filemaker? They don't exist and this is not a bad thing. You're either clueless or blowing smoke about Filemaker. Filemaker is a wonderful environment to create database like software. I've written a number of large Filemaker Solutions (yes they call them solutions) and use Filemaker extensively to prototype and then recreate the finished product with php and mysql to get more reliabilty and work around some of the limitations of Filemaker and to avoid their ungodly expensive fees. 18 months of Filemaker will buy you a helluva thing if the developer knows something. To port a filemaker db to crashcess is just ludicris but you already knew that.
You obviously had no business auditing anything to do with your competition's Filemaker thingy. I've never tried to piss nyone off here before but just couldn't help myself this time.
"Yes, installing GNUOffice 2031 will become unskilled labor. But newer technology will require newer software. Always."
Ok but the point I was trying to make wasn't about coders I was talking about support....
The majority of Big Gun software we Linux users use was written by the FSF before Redhat was even thought of or by the Apache Group or the Samba team etc. RedHat's (I use Redhat as an example and mean every one else) success may have introduced more coders to the movement but Redhat doesn't really put out all that much code. Even the code that they do put out is being written by guys who'd probably have written it without a Redhat paycheck. I think we'll all agree that Linux stock prices ot a little out of whack which really helped build up some momentum in the movement. But let's look at the typical Redhat vs Debian holywar, arguably Debian is doing it just as well as Redhat without the underlying financial drive.
Let's say company A develops a Full Sensory Virtual Interaction System and of course being the first, charges money for it and is closed source. They make a fortune, get cocky and become hated. Open Source hackers everywhere immediately become facinated and start hacking to support this new hardware. If they license their efforts under the GPL, sooner or later they will put the original company's software division out of business. Who would pay for someone's sourceless something when they get it for free and get the source? Eventually their installer and app will work so flawlessly that it no longer requires any support. Company A continues to improve the hardware and the hackers continue to improve/keep up and support is dead. So yes there will be small pockets of time when support is required to usher in the new stuff but it will be fleeting in the big picture. Writing the software for the new stuff will always exist and work will always be done on the old stuff since perfection isn't truly possible but no one will need support given enough time. That's why a GPL'ed company will fail. That's also why Microsft will fail and the GPL will survive. I can't believe I've become so fanatical these days... Must stop reading Stallman.
Wait here's a good example, the typewriter. There used to be shops that you'd bring your typewriter to get fixed. Eventually manual typewriters got so cheap and so reliable that the support for things dried up. Sure those electric jobs came along and they needed a whole new set of support for awhile till they get replaced (I know I have a few of those customers too) by the pc and by Brother. It has to stop some day. Nowadays who really works on Brother Word Processors? Come on they're so cheap you just throw it out when it wears out and get a new one.
I only half agree. As an example our cars can't go as fast today as they used too. The average speed hasn't improved for a decade.... many other aspects have continued to improve but other than safety features and climate controls and gas mileage, the rest of the crap is just frivolous. The almost perfect car could almost be a reality today if the marketing droids from the automakers and oil companies would get their heads out.
There will come a point when the speed and feature set on a computer is so complete that the average user won't need anything better and the upgrade cycle will slow to a crawl. Unless the cpu makers can build in obsolecence/failure at 37000 miles just after the warrranty runs out like they did with my wife's car. Her car is fast enough apparently gets good enough mileage for the moment anyway and has air.. what else does she really need.
"Love said he thinks Microsoft was right in its claim that the GPL doesn't make much business sense."
He's right about that.... As linux becomes more perfect, the need for support-based companies will go away. Imagine a day when you drop in your fav linux dvd, boot your computer, and it asks you want you want installed (or it just reads your mind). It partions and installs perfectly, auto detected all your hardware without a hitch and comes with perfectly written tutorials about everything. Your data is all stored in one area and a cron job backs it up automagically with a one button restore. The hardware will be so cheap it'll be disposable so if you're having hardware probs you'll throw out the old and buy new, restore your data and be back up in minutes. Who will need a support contract? Who would hire a consultant for install or data recovery help? Once wireless comes of age we won't need anyone pulling cat27 it'll just work.
Every database/app that can be imagined will already be written, listed at sourceforge and freshmeat and of course be under the GPL. Don't like the way your accounting program works? There are millions of variations of the same app to choose from with an awesome chooser that let's you drill down to find the one that solves your particular problem the best.
As long as there are good coders willing to work for free, this scenario will get closer and closer to reality. There is an optimal UI, we don't know what it is yet but we keep getting closer overall. There is perfect code... improve upon the typical Hello World app, can't right? Why? It's perfect. Now I'm not saying that the kernel or the interpreter or the hardware drivers are perfect, but Hello World can be since it's so simple. Larger apps are becoming more perfect every day and someday in the far-flung future we will have the perfect word processor, OS, DB, etc. We'll never actually achieve perfection but we'll get close enough.
Every time I write a little bash script to automate some little BS thing and I share it with others I'm putting another nail in Microsoft's coffin since they're in the business of selling software. At the same time I'm also putting a much smaller and slower acting nail in Redhat's coffin, who thinks they're in the business of selling support. Redhat and the others are literally working themselves out of a job.
None of this is bad the end users... we want free software that is perfect. Us IT people will be looking for work sooner than you might think though.
FYI my chemistry professor in High School was a real weird bird... not necessarily because he powered his car with chicken crap but that didn't help. He picked up chicken crap from the local chicken farm and let the crap ferment in a big washtub in the back of his car. He used a small charcoal fire under the washtub to heat up the crap and speed up the fermentation process while he was driving and he snuffed out he fire when he got to school by cutting off it's oxygen supply.
He said sometimes when going up a big hill he'd have to pull over and let the methane collect a bit to have enough power to make it up the hill. Now this was back in the early 80s when the environment wasn't a big issue and he was mostly trying to save a buck. The car was an old little import like maybe a 75ish Opal. He had a coil of copper tubing mounted on top of the washtub which piped the gas to the carb. It looked like a still on wheels. He was also a radical Jehova's Witness who didn't believe in deoderant but that's another story. Anyone going to my high school in the 80s will recognize this story.
Damnit get a clue! We can't let this happen. You cannot censor anyone, ever, even if it's the rat-bastard spammers. By supporting something like this you're allowing the man to take another step at total censorship. I hate all the spam too. I really do, I'd like to find some of these assholes and really hurt them but I don't. I'm the kind of guy who pretends to be interesting in the telemarketing calls just to keep the caller busy for as long as possible. I'm the guy who tells Time/Life "sure you can send that Year in Revue" book I'll gladly put it on the coffee table but I'm not going to return it nor am I going to pay for it. When they say there's no obligation I explain that there is indeed an obligation. I must take the time to package the book up and ship it back or write out a check and send it to them. Either way they are obligating me to do something I don't want to do and they don't have that right. (They've stopped sending those books BTW) These are the types of techniques that can be used to make them stop. If it's not cost effective then they'll quit.
What exactly is spam? Let's say/. is going to shut down for a few hours due to a move to a new facility. They smartly decide to send every registered/. user an email warning us of this. Cool... not spam right? But what if at the bottom of this email there's a sig that says: "Visit VA Linux Systems for all your computing needs" ?
Now is it spam? Maybe/. made up this outage as an excuse to spam us? I'm sure someone can come up with a better scenario than this. But here's the point.
Who decides what is spam? The courts? That's a great fucking idea let's hire some more lawyers and corrupt ourselves even more. Or lets setup a government task force. Of course how could the task force monitor our emails for spam? Are they going to just have us forward any emails we don't like to them so they can track down the senders and take action? Now that's not a very efficient method is it? So their next step will be to setup even more carnivore type of monitoring stations all in the name of saving us from those horrible spam messages. People like CmdrTaco might even be ok with it, given enough time and after enough conditioning. Think of all the tendonitis insurance claims and wear and tear on our keyboards/mice and bandwidth this will save worldwide. The task force will have to have a very broad range of powers in order to be effective. They could bust into/. and confiscate and hold their equipment for years while the investigation goes on. But hey they're just spammers right?
There is only one way to fight spam and that is to ignore it. If spammers weren't getting results then they would just stop. Unfortunately too many people read the spam, click on the link and spend their money.
The other way to fight spam is to fight back... figure out where the spam came from and ping fuck them to death. Yes their ISP would loose revenue from the downtime but I bet after the third of fourth time, the ISP's would beef up and enforce their agreements quite a bit. Of course to fight back like this is illegal anyway and no one would think of breaking the law.
Censorship is censorship even if you're censoring assholes. Who knows your ideas might be unpopular 5 years from now and then you'll fall victim to a law you promoted.
The FSF created gcc, ls, cp, mv, emacs, pretty much all that stuff in the/bin/usr/sbin/bin/usr/bin dirs. The Linux kernel isn't anything without those tiny little apps and those tiny little apps aren't all that useful without a kernel running. Don't for a second undervalue the FSF's contribution. RMS can be an ass IMHO but he did a real good job in this article with just a touch or his true personality coming out with the bit about 16 characters. In his defense, if I were him I'd probably cop an atitude too. He despises the Open Source Movement but he seems too impatient. The social climate can't change nearly as fast as he would like.
If it weren't for the FSF there wouldn't be a Linux or any of the xBSDs. Linus and co. write the one part of the OS that most end users never realy see or care about. The FSF write or GPL-ify most everything else. It's actually kind of ironic that Linus gets all the credit. His work is the boring behind the scenes stuff whereas we actualy interact with FSF software all the time. Understand I'm NOT dishin Linus, he's a seriously cool guy. It seems like the Hurd should be further along by now though.
It IS a blatant ripoff of slashcode! They used some of the same stuff word for word! Here's the proof:
they have <html> and </html>
slashdot has <html> and </html>
they have <head> and </head>
slashdot has <head> and </head>
they have <title> and </title>
slashdot has <title> and </title>
The have a menu on the left and slashdot can have a menu on the left. They have articles, slashdot has articles.
They got tricky with their link to "Read More" though...
Slashdot's link says "Read More" and their's just says "more" obviously they're not as smart as slashdot because slashdot has more words and they're all in title case.
The list of similiarities goes on and on. Let's sue those do-good, pony tailed geeks for ripping off Slashdot's GPLed code!
What a dumbass thing to say. I don't think I've ever intentionally trolled till now.
As to the real discussion... knowledge is power, but if I were starving and a group of over-fed geeks were trying to teach my about computers I doubt I'd be too interested. The problem is I don't have a clue if they're really starving or their water is dirty or what the real truth is. The media and Sally Struthers would like me to believe all this, but I just don't trust cnn or Sally all that much. Maybe I should get off my ass and go find out for myself. Until I do that I don't think I'm qualified to have an opinion if the Geeks are doing a good thing or not... well aside from my opinion about those thieves stealing all that free code that is.
There's only one way I can see to stop spam... don't click and don't read. If we as spammees choose not to participate then the game will end. Idiots that click through and especially those that buy perpetuate the problem. Boycotting businesses that spam will decrease the time time will take to get the message across.
Moderation points are often wasted. The previous post was a most excellent, well thought out, thought provoking post that reminds me of a simpler, better time. A time before goatsex, when e-commerce was called a shopping cart and I got more real email than spam. I dunno if this person is right or not, but at least he had something to say and he said it well.
Look People... According to this excerpt from the EULA "You may not sell or auction any EverQuest characters, items, coin or copyrighted material."
This is frigging simple! If you sell their shit then you are breaking the rules. Sony should have every right to shutdown the rule breakers accounts, period. It may be stupid or not... it doesn't matter. The auction sites on the other hand might be a different matter.
If I want to break a contract and sell something that I agreed not to, then by god any auction site that I go to had better let me auction my stuff including an auction site that the people I screwed owned, unless their EULA spelled out what I could and could not sell ahead of time. To not sell my, possibly immoral, but not illegal stuff would be discrimination or something like it. If the shit is indeed "illegal" then the auction sites are within their rights not to let me post the shit if their EULA says "you can't sell illegal shit".
I don't know if the shit is illegal or not but it's certainly not more illegal than 90% of the copies of Office for sale on Ebay.
What if I wrote some hunk o' software and in EULA stated that if the user allows his/her heart to beat while using my software they must pay me $100. Pretty stupid agreement right? Well if you are stupid enough to "sign" this agreement then you better not use my shit as I would have every right to come after my $100 and probably would, thinking you must be way too stupid to have enough money to be my software in the first place.
Why must we revel in our desire to protect ourselves from our own stupidity? And why must the courts get involved every time someone has a brain fart? I typically ignore those pesky EULAs, but if I'm ever caught breaking the rules then I'll take my punishment and be happy I've gotten away with it for this long. Oh sure I might try to fight it by saying it was not displayed prominently enough for me to notice, but I would never question such a clear cut rule as the one above and hope to have a prayer in hell of getting away with it. In fact if I wasted the court's time by trying I'd think I should get punished.
If these idiots win, and Sony looses, then the GPL has no value either. You can't have it both ways.
Don't like your EULA then don't buy the game, OS or whatever. Crying to the courts is BS. If you're not smart enough to read the EULA then you deserve what you get. If you read it and go ahead and break the rules then you deserve what you get too. If everyone would just say no, then things would change in a hurry.
"The only winning move is not to play" (or something like that it's been awhile)
In a capitalitst society it's expected that anyone in business will pull as much underhanded and down right shitty stunts as possible to win. Business is war and war is ugly. I don't blame Amazon or Altavista or this despair asshole for trying. I can think less of them personally but I must stand up for their right to be stupid as hell.... it's the American way.
The problem is the patent office. If the American tax payers could force the patent office to foot the bill for all the legal fees resulting from a trivial or down right stupid patent, then Amazon and Altavista would never have gotten these silly patents issued in the first place and everyone would be much happier.
Laws were made to be challenged to the extreme, let's pass a better better law and stop all this sutpidity.
Wasn't Lycos around way before Altavista anyway? I remember back in the time off Trumpet Winsock seeing Lycos's page say 400,000 pages indexed! and being amazed. I don't remember Altavista being a twinkle in anyone's eye back then. If they were then why didn't they have altavista.com from the git-go? My $.02
Kinda... The music industry didn't care about me making cassette copies and giving them away to friends because I couldn't make a very large dent in their profits. They did/do care about organized copying of music though. Napster/Gnutilla/whatever is an example of such organization and has the power to make a real difference in their bottom line....
Same thing here.... Amazon and co. could really make a dent in the publisher/writer's bottom line. I imagine eventually they could re-sell enough books to cut the demand for new books by 50%. If the demand for new books gets cut in half the law of supply and demand will eventually catch up and the price of new books will double. If this price doubles the re-selling of books will be more rampant since we stand to get more cash for selling our used titles and the demand for new books will drop yet again. Pretty soon only 1000 copies of the best seller will be produced and they will cost a couple grand each. Only the wealthy will be able to afford to buy current books and the rest will have to wait for them to be resold 4 or 5 times or until some hacker (yes I mean a hacker, the good kind) will scan/OCR these books in and publish them on the web. Then a constant battle will develop for the book printers to come up with new ways to subvert OCR software and our OCR software will finally start getting good.
Pretty soon only authors who truly love to write will write for free and publish their work on the net and writing popular fiction will no longer be a paid profession. Maybe the quality will go up and
The net is making many jobs obsolete. I understand why they're worried but it looks like fiction authors will end up writing installation manuals to assemble toys etc. or will be forced to get into another line of work. Or more likely we'll pay $5 bucks for a book and it will be full of ads like magazines. Times really are changing like they always have. I bet ranchers and horse buggy builders were pissed when Ford started making cars too.
The music asshole and the author's guild are fighting a loosing battle... I don't blame them for trying, but if the governments step in to help them and slow down our society's advancement then that is a bad thing.
I install networks... no one is hearing me bitch about wireless networks and dhcp and Microsoft and Linux making is so, so simple, compared to the old days when Lantastic was Lantastic, and men were men. Almost any idiot can get a network up and running these days. My time in this profession is finite and if I don't evolve then I'm going to be asking if "you'd like fries with that" too. It just life.
Thanks a fucking lot.... my 5 year old daughter and I were playing tic tac toe while I was reading/. I really appreciated explaining to her why those pics were popping up on my computer. Fucking asshole.
I've read through the posts and am ashamed of you people. You seem to think that the license agreement is even close to valid. It's not... they don't know wether I "signed" it or not. The only way they could know if I signed their agreement is if I actually register the product. So if I choose not to register windows with microsoft then they can't just assume that I'm running their products. It could be argued that M$ could tell I'm using their products by looking at my email headers or http client info, but who's to say I didn't hack pine and mozilla.
Let's say I have 20 machines in factory. 19 of those machines run some Unix for cad and 1 runs windows and Office. I signed 2 agreements with Microsoft period. They only have the right to check one and only one computer (maybe 2 now that wine runs office). If they assume I'm running their products on any of the other 19 machines then they're stupid. It's like the world's nastiest virus. If you bring any micro products into your building then they automatically get the right to look at all the machines? Get your heads out people! We are innocent till proven guilty and unless they have good evidence that I'm ripping them off, then they don't have the right to look at any more machines than copies of their software I've registered.
I'm really pissed... I do still have some rights here in the US and am sickened by those of you that just want to bend over and take it up the butt.
This is bullshit... Basically Microsft is accusing Virginia Beach of thievery. Ok Micosft has the right to accuse someone of stealing from them, that's cool, but there seems to be no way for Virginia Beach to recoop any of their losses if they're innocent.
Let's say I call the cops and tell them the guy next door stole my lawn mower... they have to get a court order in order to look in his shed. If my mower is there he's busted and I'm assuming I'll get my mower back and he'll get in trouble. But what if I accuse my neighbor, go through the whole process and the discover my lawn mower is just burried in my own messy garage? You can bet my neighbor is going to sue me for something. I couldn't even get that court order without some serious evidence in the first place. My word against his isn't going to cut it.
Virgina Beach hasn't been given that option and looks guilty by just being accused. In fact I'm so upset with those theiving city employees I'm not going to move there and pay all those taxes:)
I've long admired RMS's philosophy and have felt sorry for his lack of acknowledgment regarding Linux.... err make that GNU/Linux. Linus and some people write the kernel and RMS and the GNU crowd do the other 10-gazillion lines of code for that less important stuff like cp or rm or tar or gcc (joke people). It never seemed fair that he's not in more in the limelight. Now I know why... my god I wouldn't have gotten to email #3 without jumping in the car to go find that guy and kick his ass.
Jorrit Tyberghein had a simple question: Can my software be licensed under the lgpl if I connect to some free (as in beer), closed, binary-only bridges to a closed gaming console. Well.... NO. See how easy that was? It takes RMS a dozen or so emails later before he finally spits out an answer. I understand the dif between Open Source and the Free Software Foundation as do most people in the thick of things, but to brow beat an obviously intelligent and seemingly caring person like Jorrit is too much. Jorrit didn't even have to ask. He could have just done it and gotten tons of publicity about his project when RMS found out or he could choose one of the bsd or other licenses and stayed legal. Don't screw with the guy by saying shit like:" I have heard the name "DirectX", but I know nothing about it. It is shocking that a major Windows API would be secret." Well bullshit you can't live in the US and have half a brain and not know what DirectX is. As far as being shocked? C'mon it's Microsoft.
I believe Microsoft makes the Anti-Christ look like a do-gooder. But if you ask me how to fix the kak virus I'm going tell you without a sermon. Oh I might get in a jab or two but you'll get your answer in the first email or I'll just tell you you're too stupid for my answer and end the conversation right then and there. RMS doesn't play the game at all maybe that's good and maybe it's bad but I sure as hell don't want anyone I've been pushing Linux to, to ever meet up with him.
Put the burden of cleanliness back on the owner of the content.
We (the US gov I guess) create.g domains (.g001 through.g999). Offer a free.g domain to every.com.net.edu.org.fr.etc domain in the world. Have a license agreement that states: I promise not to put dirty pics up or sound bites of people moaning or any naughty words on my site. All the same stuff as a g rated movie whatever that may be. Links from a.g site can only go to a.g site. Website owners can choose to create a g version of their site or not. Break the rules, loose a body part and your.g domain for 10 years.
Slashdot wouldn't qualify due to the naughty language and some of the hate posts. But they might qualify for a.pg domain.
Now I as a parent can tell my browser to only allow pg and g, all domains, or just g domains. Or I can sign up with an ISP that only routes packets from.g domains. If Microsoft.com doesn't want to go to the hassle of making their website work as microsoft.g or take on the added responsibility of keeping it clean, then fine, my kids won't be able to visit their site. If slashdot wants to write a script to replace the word "fuck" with a on the.g version of their site then maybe they could qualify. If they choose not to try then the kiddies lose out, no biggie either way.
The gov could create a task force to evaluate.g sites to make sure they're not breaking the rules. It would cost some bucks (tons because the gov is involved) but not near as many as trying to censor the whole damn net. I'd actually be willing to help the gov by reporting abuses to the.g or.pg web (when I wasn't checking out porn or bomb making on the rest of the web that is).
Google could create a google.g search engine that only searches.g sites so it would become.g certified by default.
Think about it.... I write a censoring proggie that traps for the word "dick" used in a sexually oriented sentence. Website desingers start calling a "dick" a "johnson" and break my filter. I mod it to also trap for "johnson" and they start calling it a "sausage". It just can't work.
Look at the hacker lingo crap. Cops start searching for "software" the criminals (thanks so much ppl) change the term to "wares", cops catch on so the software stealers change the name to "warez". At least I assume that's the way all that developed.
It'll never happen though.... the gov doesn't care one bit if my kids are looking at porn. They're using it as an excuse to introduce censorship into my home so I won't be so shocked when they step up the the next level of invading my privacy and taking away my rights.
You could inject the hollow with a fairly low exothermic epoxy or silicon to create a permanent model. I'd like to have a 3d model of my spine that'd be cool. Special effects ppl in hollywood would kill for something like this.
pulled the platters our of a bad Maxtor IDE drive (drive motor went out) and put them into another drive. Spun the drive up while open and copied about 30 meg of stuff off of it for a client. I was in my fairly dirty basement. I let it run for a couple of hours on my bench and it worked fine. I pulled those really nice magents our of both drives and trashed the rest when I was done playing.
I'm not too familiar with XDMCP but will check into it. Obviously I'm a tard since I didn't stop to think how Vncserver runs on a Linux box. I admin about 80 Windoze boxes (3 Linux servers) in a 120,000 sq ft factory.... VNC has literally saved my butt and I go about singing songs about vnc. But as it's been pointed out, in this situation it would be useless for the help desk.
However installing Vmware/Windows on 2500 clients is gonna be damned expensive even if you're a school. Vmware is expensive, requires lots of ram, windows NT is expensive and requires lots of ram. Assuming you only need occasional Winblows action... why not use the VNC client (or even just a java capable browser or this XDMCP stuff) and install vmware on a few big ol honking machines and let the users share just a few copies of Windows. It'd be one of those "Hey Bill you done with NT #5?... Let me know when you are as I need to do x" situations but fairly cost effective if your needs are light.
Install vnc on all the workstations to help with support or get a golf cart to run around and fix user's screwups.
All apps should reside on the workstations to keep bandwidth requirements down. All data should reside on a server or probably better, on a cluster (I didn't say the b-word:)of servers to reduce downtime.
Samba works pretty well for for sharing drive space and will let the occasional Windows box connect too. Subnet subnet subnet. Put as many nic's in the central server as possible, each with it's own subnet IE nic_0 = 10.0.0.0 nic_1=10.0.1.0 etc. This would allow you to assign user groups (accounting, sales engineering etc.) to their own subnet so as to increase security a bit.
XFCE is a nice little window manager too.
Web based email would be pretty easy to maintain and nice for the users.
Vmware running different operating systems on an OS server would allow your users access using VNC to office2000 for instance to fix the occasional word.doc or excel.xls that didn't convert into the Star Office format quite right.
ssh ssh ssh delete telnet right off the bat and use ssh. Create tunnels for ftp and vnc since ssh can compress the datastream.
A real crude model.... 1) make a really long wire just like their chamber. 2) send (or don't send) a pulse of light every second. 3) On the receiving end, If you get light on second 1 not on 2 3 or 4 and light on 5, 6, 7, and 8 then end up with 10001111.
Granted sending uncompressed serial data might not have the highest bandwidth but negative latency!
Since the light "travels" faster that light wouldn't a longer wire be quicker?
Slashdot Mirror
sorry
WTF are you talking about?
"maxed out the SQL zoom editor" WTF is a zoom editor in Filemaker? Yes I know filemaker inside and out and it's a different animal from anything else going. There are no "tables" per se, no variables they're called "global fields" and primary keys are refered to as indexing on/off. WTF are modules in Filemaker? They don't exist and this is not a bad thing. You're either clueless or blowing smoke about Filemaker. Filemaker is a wonderful environment to create database like software. I've written a number of large Filemaker Solutions (yes they call them solutions) and use Filemaker extensively to prototype and then recreate the finished product with php and mysql to get more reliabilty and work around some of the limitations of Filemaker and to avoid their ungodly expensive fees. 18 months of Filemaker will buy you a helluva thing if the developer knows something. To port a filemaker db to crashcess is just ludicris but you already knew that.
You obviously had no business auditing anything to do with your competition's Filemaker thingy. I've never tried to piss nyone off here before but just couldn't help myself this time.
G
"Yes, installing GNUOffice 2031 will become unskilled labor. But newer technology will require newer software. Always."
Ok but the point I was trying to make wasn't about coders I was talking about support....
The majority of Big Gun software we Linux users use was written by the FSF before Redhat was even thought of or by the Apache Group or the Samba team etc. RedHat's (I use Redhat as an example and mean every one else) success may have introduced more coders to the movement but Redhat doesn't really put out all that much code. Even the code that they do put out is being written by guys who'd probably have written it without a Redhat paycheck. I think we'll all agree that Linux stock prices ot a little out of whack which really helped build up some momentum in the movement. But let's look at the typical Redhat vs Debian holywar, arguably Debian is doing it just as well as Redhat without the underlying financial drive.
Let's say company A develops a Full Sensory Virtual Interaction System and of course being the first, charges money for it and is closed source. They make a fortune, get cocky and become hated. Open Source hackers everywhere immediately become facinated and start hacking to support this new hardware. If they license their efforts under the GPL, sooner or later they will put the original company's software division out of business. Who would pay for someone's sourceless something when they get it for free and get the source? Eventually their installer and app will work so flawlessly that it no longer requires any support. Company A continues to improve the hardware and the hackers continue to improve/keep up and support is dead. So yes there will be small pockets of time when support is required to usher in the new stuff but it will be fleeting in the big picture. Writing the software for the new stuff will always exist and work will always be done on the old stuff since perfection isn't truly possible but no one will need support given enough time. That's why a GPL'ed company will fail. That's also why Microsft will fail and the GPL will survive. I can't believe I've become so fanatical these days... Must stop reading Stallman.
Wait here's a good example, the typewriter. There used to be shops that you'd bring your typewriter to get fixed. Eventually manual typewriters got so cheap and so reliable that the support for things dried up. Sure those electric jobs came along and they needed a whole new set of support for awhile till they get replaced (I know I have a few of those customers too) by the pc and by Brother. It has to stop some day. Nowadays who really works on Brother Word Processors? Come on they're so cheap you just throw it out when it wears out and get a new one.
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I only half agree. As an example our cars can't go as fast today as they used too. The average speed hasn't improved for a decade.... many other aspects have continued to improve but other than safety features and climate controls and gas mileage, the rest of the crap is just frivolous. The almost perfect car could almost be a reality today if the marketing droids from the automakers and oil companies would get their heads out.
There will come a point when the speed and feature set on a computer is so complete that the average user won't need anything better and the upgrade cycle will slow to a crawl. Unless the cpu makers can build in obsolecence/failure at 37000 miles just after the warrranty runs out like they did with my wife's car. Her car is fast enough apparently gets good enough mileage for the moment anyway and has air.. what else does she really need.
"Love said he thinks Microsoft was right in its claim that the GPL doesn't make much business sense."
He's right about that.... As linux becomes more perfect, the need for support-based companies will go away. Imagine a day when you drop in your fav linux dvd, boot your computer, and it asks you want you want installed (or it just reads your mind). It partions and installs perfectly, auto detected all your hardware without a hitch and comes with perfectly written tutorials about everything. Your data is all stored in one area and a cron job backs it up automagically with a one button restore. The hardware will be so cheap it'll be disposable so if you're having hardware probs you'll throw out the old and buy new, restore your data and be back up in minutes. Who will need a support contract? Who would hire a consultant for install or data recovery help? Once wireless comes of age we won't need anyone pulling cat27 it'll just work.
Every database/app that can be imagined will already be written, listed at sourceforge and freshmeat and of course be under the GPL. Don't like the way your accounting program works? There are millions of variations of the same app to choose from with an awesome chooser that let's you drill down to find the one that solves your particular problem the best.
As long as there are good coders willing to work for free, this scenario will get closer and closer to reality. There is an optimal UI, we don't know what it is yet but we keep getting closer overall. There is perfect code... improve upon the typical Hello World app, can't right? Why? It's perfect. Now I'm not saying that the kernel or the interpreter or the hardware drivers are perfect, but Hello World can be since it's so simple. Larger apps are becoming more perfect every day and someday in the far-flung future we will have the perfect word processor, OS, DB, etc. We'll never actually achieve perfection but we'll get close enough.
Every time I write a little bash script to automate some little BS thing and I share it with others I'm putting another nail in Microsoft's coffin since they're in the business of selling software. At the same time I'm also putting a much smaller and slower acting nail in Redhat's coffin, who thinks they're in the business of selling support. Redhat and the others are literally working themselves out of a job.
None of this is bad the end users... we want free software that is perfect. Us IT people will be looking for work sooner than you might think though.
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FYI my chemistry professor in High School was a real weird bird... not necessarily because he powered his car with chicken crap but that didn't help. He picked up chicken crap from the local chicken farm and let the crap ferment in a big washtub in the back of his car. He used a small charcoal fire under the washtub to heat up the crap and speed up the fermentation process while he was driving and he snuffed out he fire when he got to school by cutting off it's oxygen supply.
He said sometimes when going up a big hill he'd have to pull over and let the methane collect a bit to have enough power to make it up the hill. Now this was back in the early 80s when the environment wasn't a big issue and he was mostly trying to save a buck. The car was an old little import like maybe a 75ish Opal. He had a coil of copper tubing mounted on top of the washtub which piped the gas to the carb. It looked like a still on wheels. He was also a radical Jehova's Witness who didn't believe in deoderant but that's another story. Anyone going to my high school in the 80s will recognize this story.
That is all.
Damnit get a clue! We can't let this happen. You cannot censor anyone, ever, even if it's the rat-bastard spammers. By supporting something like this you're allowing the man to take another step at total censorship. I hate all the spam too. I really do, I'd like to find some of these assholes and really hurt them but I don't. I'm the kind of guy who pretends to be interesting in the telemarketing calls just to keep the caller busy for as long as possible. I'm the guy who tells Time/Life "sure you can send that Year in Revue" book I'll gladly put it on the coffee table but I'm not going to return it nor am I going to pay for it. When they say there's no obligation I explain that there is indeed an obligation. I must take the time to package the book up and ship it back or write out a check and send it to them. Either way they are obligating me to do something I don't want to do and they don't have that right. (They've stopped sending those books BTW) These are the types of techniques that can be used to make them stop. If it's not cost effective then they'll quit.
/. is going to shut down for a few hours due to a move to a new facility. They smartly decide to send every registered /. user an email warning us of this. Cool... not spam right? But what if at the bottom of this email there's a sig that says: "Visit VA Linux Systems for all your computing needs" ?
/. made up this outage as an excuse to spam us? I'm sure someone can come up with a better scenario than this. But here's the point.
/. and confiscate and hold their equipment for years while the investigation goes on. But hey they're just spammers right?
What exactly is spam? Let's say
Now is it spam? Maybe
Who decides what is spam? The courts? That's a great fucking idea let's hire some more lawyers and corrupt ourselves even more. Or lets setup a government task force. Of course how could the task force monitor our emails for spam? Are they going to just have us forward any emails we don't like to them so they can track down the senders and take action? Now that's not a very efficient method is it? So their next step will be to setup even more carnivore type of monitoring stations all in the name of saving us from those horrible spam messages. People like CmdrTaco might even be ok with it, given enough time and after enough conditioning. Think of all the tendonitis insurance claims and wear and tear on our keyboards/mice and bandwidth this will save worldwide. The task force will have to have a very broad range of powers in order to be effective. They could bust into
There is only one way to fight spam and that is to ignore it. If spammers weren't getting results then they would just stop. Unfortunately too many people read the spam, click on the link and spend their money.
The other way to fight spam is to fight back... figure out where the spam came from and ping fuck them to death. Yes their ISP would loose revenue from the downtime but I bet after the third of fourth time, the ISP's would beef up and enforce their agreements quite a bit. Of course to fight back like this is illegal anyway and no one would think of breaking the law.
Censorship is censorship even if you're censoring assholes. Who knows your ideas might be unpopular 5 years from now and then you'll fall victim to a law you promoted.
G
The FSF created gcc, ls, cp, mv, emacs, pretty much all that stuff in the /bin /usr/sbin /bin /usr/bin dirs. The Linux kernel isn't anything without those tiny little apps and those tiny little apps aren't all that useful without a kernel running. Don't for a second undervalue the FSF's contribution. RMS can be an ass IMHO but he did a real good job in this article with just a touch or his true personality coming out with the bit about 16 characters. In his defense, if I were him I'd probably cop an atitude too. He despises the Open Source Movement but he seems too impatient. The social climate can't change nearly as fast as he would like.
If it weren't for the FSF there wouldn't be a Linux or any of the xBSDs. Linus and co. write the one part of the OS that most end users never realy see or care about. The FSF write or GPL-ify most everything else. It's actually kind of ironic that Linus gets all the credit. His work is the boring behind the scenes stuff whereas we actualy interact with FSF software all the time. Understand I'm NOT dishin Linus, he's a seriously cool guy. It seems like the Hurd should be further along by now though.
It IS a blatant ripoff of slashcode! They used some of the same stuff word for word! Here's the proof:
they have <html> and </html>
slashdot has <html> and </html>
they have <head> and </head>
slashdot has <head> and </head>
they have <title> and </title>
slashdot has <title> and </title>
The have a menu on the left and slashdot can have a menu on the left. They have articles, slashdot has articles.
They got tricky with their link to "Read More" though...
Slashdot's link says "Read More" and their's just says "more" obviously they're not as smart as slashdot because slashdot has more words and they're all in title case.
The list of similiarities goes on and on. Let's sue those do-good, pony tailed geeks for ripping off Slashdot's GPLed code!
What a dumbass thing to say. I don't think I've ever intentionally trolled till now.
As to the real discussion... knowledge is power, but if I were starving and a group of over-fed geeks were trying to teach my about computers I doubt I'd be too interested. The problem is I don't have a clue if they're really starving or their water is dirty or what the real truth is. The media and Sally Struthers would like me to believe all this, but I just don't trust cnn or Sally all that much. Maybe I should get off my ass and go find out for myself. Until I do that I don't think I'm qualified to have an opinion if the Geeks are doing a good thing or not... well aside from my opinion about those thieves stealing all that free code that is.
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There's only one way I can see to stop spam... don't click and don't read. If we as spammees choose not to participate then the game will end. Idiots that click through and especially those that buy perpetuate the problem. Boycotting businesses that spam will decrease the time time will take to get the message across.
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Moderation points are often wasted. The previous post was a most excellent, well thought out, thought provoking post that reminds me of a simpler, better time. A time before goatsex, when e-commerce was called a shopping cart and I got more real email than spam. I dunno if this person is right or not, but at least he had something to say and he said it well.
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longing for the old slashdot
Look People... According to this excerpt from the EULA "You may not sell or auction any EverQuest characters, items, coin or copyrighted material."
This is frigging simple! If you sell their shit then you are breaking the rules. Sony should have every right to shutdown the rule breakers accounts, period. It may be stupid or not... it doesn't matter. The auction sites on the other hand might be a different matter.
If I want to break a contract and sell something that I agreed not to, then by god any auction site that I go to had better let me auction my stuff including an auction site that the people I screwed owned, unless their EULA spelled out what I could and could not sell ahead of time. To not sell my, possibly immoral, but not illegal stuff would be discrimination or something like it. If the shit is indeed "illegal" then the auction sites are within their rights not to let me post the shit if their EULA says "you can't sell illegal shit".
I don't know if the shit is illegal or not but it's certainly not more illegal than 90% of the copies of Office for sale on Ebay.
What if I wrote some hunk o' software and in EULA stated that if the user allows his/her heart to beat while using my software they must pay me $100. Pretty stupid agreement right? Well if you are stupid enough to "sign" this agreement then you better not use my shit as I would have every right to come after my $100 and probably would, thinking you must be way too stupid to have enough money to be my software in the first place.
Why must we revel in our desire to protect ourselves from our own stupidity? And why must the courts get involved every time someone has a brain fart? I typically ignore those pesky EULAs, but if I'm ever caught breaking the rules then I'll take my punishment and be happy I've gotten away with it for this long. Oh sure I might try to fight it by saying it was not displayed prominently enough for me to notice, but I would never question such a clear cut rule as the one above and hope to have a prayer in hell of getting away with it. In fact if I wasted the court's time by trying I'd think I should get punished.
If these idiots win, and Sony looses, then the GPL has no value either. You can't have it both ways.
Don't like your EULA then don't buy the game, OS or whatever. Crying to the courts is BS. If you're not smart enough to read the EULA then you deserve what you get. If you read it and go ahead and break the rules then you deserve what you get too. If everyone would just say no, then things would change in a hurry.
"The only winning move is not to play" (or something like that it's been awhile)
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In a capitalitst society it's expected that anyone in business will pull as much underhanded and down right shitty stunts as possible to win. Business is war and war is ugly. I don't blame Amazon or Altavista or this despair asshole for trying. I can think less of them personally but I must stand up for their right to be stupid as hell.... it's the American way.
The problem is the patent office. If the American tax payers could force the patent office to foot the bill for all the legal fees resulting from a trivial or down right stupid patent, then Amazon and Altavista would never have gotten these silly patents issued in the first place and everyone would be much happier.
Laws were made to be challenged to the extreme, let's pass a better better law and stop all this sutpidity.
Wasn't Lycos around way before Altavista anyway? I remember back in the time off Trumpet Winsock seeing Lycos's page say 400,000 pages indexed! and being amazed. I don't remember Altavista being a twinkle in anyone's eye back then. If they were then why didn't they have altavista.com from the git-go? My $.02
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Kinda... The music industry didn't care about me making cassette copies and giving them away to friends because I couldn't make a very large dent in their profits. They did/do care about organized copying of music though. Napster/Gnutilla/whatever is an example of such organization and has the power to make a real difference in their bottom line....
Same thing here.... Amazon and co. could really make a dent in the publisher/writer's bottom line. I imagine eventually they could re-sell enough books to cut the demand for new books by 50%. If the demand for new books gets cut in half the law of supply and demand will eventually catch up and the price of new books will double. If this price doubles the re-selling of books will be more rampant since we stand to get more cash for selling our used titles and the demand for new books will drop yet again. Pretty soon only 1000 copies of the best seller will be produced and they will cost a couple grand each. Only the wealthy will be able to afford to buy current books and the rest will have to wait for them to be resold 4 or 5 times or until some hacker (yes I mean a hacker, the good kind) will scan/OCR these books in and publish them on the web. Then a constant battle will develop for the book printers to come up with new ways to subvert OCR software and our OCR software will finally start getting good.
Pretty soon only authors who truly love to write will write for free and publish their work on the net and writing popular fiction will no longer be a paid profession. Maybe the quality will go up and
The net is making many jobs obsolete. I understand why they're worried but it looks like fiction authors will end up writing installation manuals to assemble toys etc. or will be forced to get into another line of work. Or more likely we'll pay $5 bucks for a book and it will be full of ads like magazines. Times really are changing like they always have. I bet ranchers and horse buggy builders were pissed when Ford started making cars too.
The music asshole and the author's guild are fighting a loosing battle... I don't blame them for trying, but if the governments step in to help them and slow down our society's advancement then that is a bad thing.
I install networks... no one is hearing me bitch about wireless networks and dhcp and Microsoft and Linux making is so, so simple, compared to the old days when Lantastic was Lantastic, and men were men. Almost any idiot can get a network up and running these days. My time in this profession is finite and if I don't evolve then I'm going to be asking if "you'd like fries with that" too. It just life.
Thanks a fucking lot.... my 5 year old daughter and I were playing tic tac toe while I was reading /. I really appreciated explaining to her why those pics were popping up on my computer. Fucking asshole.
I've read through the posts and am ashamed of you people. You seem to think that the license agreement is even close to valid. It's not... they don't know wether I "signed" it or not. The only way they could know if I signed their agreement is if I actually register the product. So if I choose not to register windows with microsoft then they can't just assume that I'm running their products. It could be argued that M$ could tell I'm using their products by looking at my email headers or http client info, but who's to say I didn't hack pine and mozilla.
Let's say I have 20 machines in factory. 19 of those machines run some Unix for cad and 1 runs windows and Office. I signed 2 agreements with Microsoft period. They only have the right to check one and only one computer (maybe 2 now that wine runs office). If they assume I'm running their products on any of the other 19 machines then they're stupid. It's like the world's nastiest virus. If you bring any micro products into your building then they automatically get the right to look at all the machines? Get your heads out people! We are innocent till proven guilty and unless they have good evidence that I'm ripping them off, then they don't have the right to look at any more machines than copies of their software I've registered.
I'm really pissed... I do still have some rights here in the US and am sickened by those of you that just want to bend over and take it up the butt.
(See my other post a few posts below)
This is bullshit... Basically Microsft is accusing Virginia Beach of thievery. Ok Micosft has the right to accuse someone of stealing from them, that's cool, but there seems to be no way for Virginia Beach to recoop any of their losses if they're innocent.
:)
Let's say I call the cops and tell them the guy next door stole my lawn mower... they have to get a court order in order to look in his shed. If my mower is there he's busted and I'm assuming I'll get my mower back and he'll get in trouble. But what if I accuse my neighbor, go through the whole process and the discover my lawn mower is just burried in my own messy garage? You can bet my neighbor is going to sue me for something. I couldn't even get that court order without some serious evidence in the first place. My word against his isn't going to cut it.
Virgina Beach hasn't been given that option and looks guilty by just being accused. In fact I'm so upset with those theiving city employees I'm not going to move there and pay all those taxes
I've long admired RMS's philosophy and have felt sorry for his lack of acknowledgment regarding Linux.... err make that GNU/Linux. Linus and some people write the kernel and RMS and the GNU crowd do the other 10-gazillion lines of code for that less important stuff like cp or rm or tar or gcc (joke people). It never seemed fair that he's not in more in the limelight. Now I know why... my god I wouldn't have gotten to email #3 without jumping in the car to go find that guy and kick his ass.
Jorrit Tyberghein had a simple question: Can my software be licensed under the lgpl if I connect to some free (as in beer), closed, binary-only bridges to a closed gaming console. Well.... NO. See how easy that was? It takes RMS a dozen or so emails later before he finally spits out an answer. I understand the dif between Open Source and the Free Software Foundation as do most people in the thick of things, but to brow beat an obviously intelligent and seemingly caring person like Jorrit is too much. Jorrit didn't even have to ask. He could have just done it and gotten tons of publicity about his project when RMS found out or he could choose one of the bsd or other licenses and stayed legal. Don't screw with the guy by saying shit like:" I have heard the name "DirectX", but I know nothing about it. It is shocking that a major Windows API would be secret." Well bullshit you can't live in the US and have half a brain and not know what DirectX is. As far as being shocked? C'mon it's Microsoft.
I believe Microsoft makes the Anti-Christ look like a do-gooder. But if you ask me how to fix the kak virus I'm going tell you without a sermon. Oh I might get in a jab or two but you'll get your answer in the first email or I'll just tell you you're too stupid for my answer and end the conversation right then and there. RMS doesn't play the game at all maybe that's good and maybe it's bad but I sure as hell don't want anyone I've been pushing Linux to, to ever meet up with him.
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Put the burden of cleanliness back on the owner of the content.
.g domains (.g001 through .g999). Offer a free .g domain to every .com .net .edu .org .fr .etc domain in the world. Have a license agreement that states: I promise not to put dirty pics up or sound bites of people moaning or any naughty words on my site. All the same stuff as a g rated movie whatever that may be. Links from a .g site can only go to a .g site. Website owners can choose to create a g version of their site or not. Break the rules, loose a body part and your .g domain for 10 years.
.pg domain.
.g domains. If Microsoft.com doesn't want to go to the hassle of making their website work as microsoft.g or take on the added responsibility of keeping it clean, then fine, my kids won't be able to visit their site. If slashdot wants to write a script to replace the word "fuck" with a on the .g version of their site then maybe they could qualify. If they choose not to try then the kiddies lose out, no biggie either way.
.g sites to make sure they're not breaking the rules. It would cost some bucks (tons because the gov is involved) but not near as many as trying to censor the whole damn net. I'd actually be willing to help the gov by reporting abuses to the .g or .pg web (when I wasn't checking out porn or bomb making on the rest of the web that is).
.g sites so it would become .g certified by default.
We (the US gov I guess) create
Slashdot wouldn't qualify due to the naughty language and some of the hate posts. But they might qualify for a
Now I as a parent can tell my browser to only allow pg and g, all domains, or just g domains. Or I can sign up with an ISP that only routes packets from
The gov could create a task force to evaluate
Google could create a google.g search engine that only searches
Think about it.... I write a censoring proggie that traps for the word "dick" used in a sexually oriented sentence. Website desingers start calling a "dick" a "johnson" and break my filter. I mod it to also trap for "johnson" and they start calling it a "sausage". It just can't work.
Look at the hacker lingo crap. Cops start searching for "software" the criminals (thanks so much ppl) change the term to "wares", cops catch on so the software stealers change the name to "warez". At least I assume that's the way all that developed.
It'll never happen though.... the gov doesn't care one bit if my kids are looking at porn. They're using it as an excuse to introduce censorship into my home so I won't be so shocked when they step up the the next level of invading my privacy and taking away my rights.
sigless G
You could inject the hollow with a fairly low exothermic epoxy or silicon to create a permanent model. I'd like to have a 3d model of my spine that'd be cool. Special effects ppl in hollywood would kill for something like this.
pulled the platters our of a bad Maxtor IDE drive (drive motor went out) and put them into another drive. Spun the drive up while open and copied about 30 meg of stuff off of it for a client. I was in my fairly dirty basement. I let it run for a couple of hours on my bench and it worked fine. I pulled those really nice magents our of both drives and trashed the rest when I was done playing.
I just realized you could just run vmware X to X and cut out vnc altogether. Probably works better too.
I'm not too familiar with XDMCP but will check into it. Obviously I'm a tard since I didn't stop to think how Vncserver runs on a Linux box. I admin about 80 Windoze boxes (3 Linux servers) in a 120,000 sq ft factory.... VNC has literally saved my butt and I go about singing songs about vnc. But as it's been pointed out, in this situation it would be useless for the help desk.
However installing Vmware/Windows on 2500 clients is gonna be damned expensive even if you're a school. Vmware is expensive, requires lots of ram, windows NT is expensive and requires lots of ram. Assuming you only need occasional Winblows action... why not use the VNC client (or even just a java capable browser or this XDMCP stuff) and install vmware on a few big ol honking machines and let the users share just a few copies of Windows. It'd be one of those "Hey Bill you done with NT #5?... Let me know when you are as I need to do x" situations but fairly cost effective if your needs are light.
Install vnc on all the workstations to help with support or get a golf cart to run around and fix user's screwups.
:)of servers to reduce downtime.
All apps should reside on the workstations to keep bandwidth requirements down. All data should reside on a server or probably better, on a cluster (I didn't say the b-word
Samba works pretty well for for sharing drive space and will let the occasional Windows box connect too. Subnet subnet subnet. Put as many nic's in the central server as possible, each with it's own subnet IE nic_0 = 10.0.0.0 nic_1=10.0.1.0 etc. This would allow you to assign user groups (accounting, sales engineering etc.) to their own subnet so as to increase security a bit.
XFCE is a nice little window manager too.
Web based email would be pretty easy to maintain and nice for the users.
Vmware running different operating systems on an OS server would allow your users access using VNC to office2000 for instance to fix the occasional word.doc or excel.xls that didn't convert into the Star Office format quite right.
ssh ssh ssh delete telnet right off the bat and use ssh. Create tunnels for ftp and vnc since ssh can compress the datastream.
Hope this helped.
A real crude model....
1) make a really long wire just like their chamber.
2) send (or don't send) a pulse of light every second.
3) On the receiving end, If you get light on second 1 not on 2 3 or 4 and light on 5, 6, 7, and 8 then end up with 10001111.
Granted sending uncompressed serial data might not have the highest bandwidth but negative latency!
Since the light "travels" faster that light wouldn't a longer wire be quicker?