... so I don't see this as the end of some kind of fad. In the beginning it was easy for anybody to find articles on popular subjects that still needed lots of work (if they existed at all). However, as time passed and people continued to contribute, it naturally became increasingly likely that any particular subject would already have an article that was relatively complete. Consequently, it will become increasingly unlikely that the average person will be able to continue making as many meaningful contributions.
On the other hand, I spent about three years at WP and have witnessed a lot of impolite, petty and downright childish behavior among some of the most active contributors and administrators. As a result, overall quality is not what it could be. For instance, regarding scientific subjects -- especially biology -- I found it very frustrating that so many people regarded article format and personal interest to be more important than content and accuracy. Once this changes, though, WP will definitely become more valuable, but it will also become even more difficult for the average person to edit without being reverted.
As someone with a fair amount of experience with backups in corporate environments, I realized years ago that achieving the same thing at home with tapes was simply not practical. I'll assume you're using something like BSD or Linux like I am, so I'll ignore commercial backup software, but even then there's plenty left to be confused about.
First of all: hardware. Years ago, I gave tapes a try, but the only affordable drives I could find, from Onstream, kept breaking down on me and the tapes were not too cheap. I would have preferred DLT, but that technology was prohibitively expensive for home use. So, that left disk-based backups. The good thing is that disks are fast and the space is cheap these days.
Software. Mainly I use a backup package called faubackup, which I think is simple and easy to use. It's very economical with disk space because subsequent backups consist largely of hard links to files that were backed up previously and have have not been changed since. Data from remote machines is first copied to the backup server with rsync, after which that data is backed up depending on rsync's success. I use my own scripts to coordinate faubackup and rsync.
Redundancy. I'm luckily in that I also maintain similar servers for some friends in other parts of the country and have managed to convince them of the advantages of backing up our data to each other's servers. Rsync is really good for doing this, but obviously I leave out the directories with the bulky media files when copying data across the Internet (we all have ADSL with only 1 Mb of upload bandwidth).
Disks. Until recently I've always configured servers with two disks: one for the system and data and the other for backups only. It's a cheap solution that I've always been very pleased with. Since each of the two disks has hundreds of gigabytes of space available, I can afford to maintain many more backups than with a typical 21-tape strategy. The only problem that I've encountered so far is that moving the backups to a new disk can be very time-consuming: as opposed to copying only it's contents, you're forced to copy the entire partition over because of all the hard links it contains.
Alternative disk configuration. The last server I installed uses an SSD for it's boot and root file systems (using the 'noatime' partition attribute) and houses all of its data (along with/root,/tmp and/var) on a 4-disk RAID-5 array. This system performs very nicely, but the only thing I'm perhaps not 100% comfortable with is the fact that the backup partition is also located on the array.That may seem safe enough, but now I feel that maybe I should have used an extra disk, or even a pair of mirrored disks, for the backups instead.
Amazing! I personally brought this story up in 2002: Build a Nuclear Fusion Reactor at Home. Back then, a number of very informative comments were made that only helped to confirm my suspicion that it will never work.
True, running your own mailserver is only half of the solution, but as more people do the same it will become less likely that any 3rd party mail servers will be involved in your email exchanges. Many of my friends have ADSL connections and also run their own private mail servers. In these cases, my exchanges with them are also encrypted.
First, chair jokes have become an important part of Slashdot culture and it would be a shame to lose that. Let's face it: Steve is funny in a way that I doubt any successor of his will ever be. They just won't be able to compete. I mean, Steve looks and acts like the 800-pound gorilla that is M$. Developers, developers, developers... He was born for this job!
Second, and more seriously, what's bad for M$ is good for us. Besides, you don't really think that anyone taking over from Steve will turn M$ into a kinder, gentler company, do you? No way! Anyone who does will know that if M$ is to keep raking in its billions, the company will have no choice but to defend its current monopoly.
We don't do this (legally) to animals in public,... Well, I seem to remember that Dan Quayle used to have a dog that he had outfitted with a special radio controlled collar. Apparently, the dog had an irritating habit of trying to run away, so the collar was set to subject the unfortunate canine to a mild electric shock whenever it strayed too far from another device, presumably carried by Dan Quayle. I imagine the device was legal, at least at the time.
Microsoft has been punished already. Time to move on.
Why? That would be applying different standards in different situations and thus be hypocritical of the EU. According to your view, any company that the EU government would first find guilty of abuse and force to pay a fine, would then have to be exempted from precisely the conditions dealing with market abuse that the EU say must be met to participate in public procurement procedures. That makes no sense at all... except perhaps to Microsoft.
The other way around, it makes much more sense: I'll bet that it's not possible to apply this particular ban to a supplier *before* it has first been found guilty and fined for abuse!
If Heidi had been a member of a German conservative party and had been asking whether or not it was right for the EU to use Open Source Software, then I would indeed wonder who her campaign contributers were, seeing as these days it's mainly Microsoft that would stand to gain from such a measure.
However, seeing as she is actually a member of a more left wing party and her proposal only stands to disadvantage the software market's 800-pound gorilla, I seriously doubt that she's receiving any extraordinary monetary compensation for her efforts in this case.
So, you seem understand the principle of how campaign contributions can influence politicians, but have succeeded in applying it in exactly the wrong way; kind of like putting the left shoe on the right foot.
No, the question is, Why on Earth would I want to *buy* software -- from *&^! Microsoft! -- in order to avoid someone I don't even know and don't care about?
Has anyone here bothered to read any of Brian Herbert's Dune stories? I've read a few that are supposed to predate the stories in his father's novels. At first they seemed okay -- entertaining at least -- but then I started to get the feeling that it was really just pulp. To be sure, I decided to read Frank's first Dune book again. I hadn't read it in at least 15 years, but soon after I got started again it became clear to me why Frank was such a genius. I'm sure I've read at least as much sci-fi as most people here, but there is a quality to Frank's writing, particularly in these books, that I've not encountered in any other work of science-fiction or fantasy. It's not so much the plot, but the way the central characters develop, the different philosophies involved and the many layers of loyalties and complicated politics that make it all so fascinating. I ended up reading all six of Frank's books again and was even more impressed this time around because I understood and therefore could appreciate more of the books than before.
However, it's this difference -- the qualities that make Frank's writings stand out -- that are impossible to do justice to on the screen. Take any combination of movie director, actors, budget, producer, special effects and cinematographer you want, but if were to shoot a movie based on one of Frank's Dune books and then on one of Brian's, I'm pretty sure you'd see no difference. It's simply not possible to do Frank's genius any justice on the screen. He was brilliant for being a *novelist* -- not for being a playwright. So, forget the movie; just read the books again!
That's no longer considered a critical problem. First, everything that's in orbit and over 10 cm in size is already being tracked, and they're working on bringing that down to 1 cm. Therefore, if it's know what's on a collision course with the ribbon in advance, it's possible to simply move the ribbon out of the way in advance by moving the anchor at its base. One of the things that makes this approach feasible if the fact that most satellites and orbital debris is at 500-1700 km altitude -- a small fraction of the total length of the ribbon. Also, by doubling the width the ribbon between the above critical altitudes, it's possible to decrease the risk of a catastrophic failure due to an orbital object impact by another 30%.
Nope. That would weigh it down too much. The whole concept is only possible because, even if it's many thousands of kilometers long, a carbon-nanotube tether is still strong enough to support its own weight. Sure, it will be possible for it to support a few such counterweights if necessary -- a few more as extra tethers are added for strength -- but never as many as you suggest.
It may seem strange, but if you're a security professional and relish a severe challenge (or just want the money), then the Redmond campus may be just the place you want to be! However, after a while I can only imagine that the experience must feel more like beating your head against a wall.
... not read one of his books of failed to be impressed? I'm sure I've read most of his books, if not all (especially the ones he wrote on his own), but probably my favorite is "Fountains of Paradise" -- I can still remember so much of the story even though I last read it in the 1980s. Maybe not all of it, but who can forget the concept?! Okay, maybe he didn't think of this one himself, but if the space elevator ever becomes a reality, it'll probably be thanks to this book.
I'm going to miss him. He was one of those people who you've admired for so long that you hope they'll live forever. Of course, nobody ever does, so when people like Sir Arthur start to grow old and you hear that they're becoming weaker, you begin to dread the inevitable years in advance. A world without people like this is so much less interesting. Hell, I still hate the fact that Frank Zappa and Richard Feynman are no longer with us -- two of my other heros. Sir Arthur's passing is also going to take a very long time to get used to.
This article seems to suggest that a substantial number of Wikipedians would like to see more serious and less trivial content. But what about the more interesting articles that are being held back? For example, during the past two years I've tried very hard to advance a series of natural history articles to a higher level, paying particular attention to the taxonomy involved. Unfortunately, there seems to be little desire for a systematic and hierarchical approach in writing such articles. At least in my corner of WP, it's like there's a glass ceiling that most editors would rather not see anyone break through. If this trend continues, IMO large sections of WP will remain quite average at best.
I was unaware of this, but sadly I'm not surprised to hear it. At the time I was offered a choice between the keyboard wedge scanners and a USB variant thereof. I went for the former, fearing that the latter might end up needing Windows drivers. The USB version turned out to work like a keyboard anyway, but now it seems I was right to be suspicious of it.
To a PC, a barcode scanner is nothing strange: it looks and behaves exactly like a keyboard. The first barcode scanners I played around with even came with splitters so that you could attach them to the PS/2 port along with the keyboard. Those scanners also came with some templates (barcodes) so that you could set the barcode scanner to read the barcode type that you were using for your inventory. The rest is up to your Point-of-Sale software that only needs to support the principle. The cursor needs to start in a field where the barcode is filled in, it uses the barcode to look up the matching product in its database, it fills in the description and price and then jumps to the next product. In other words, if the scanner were to break down you could just as easily type in the human-readable codes on the barcode stickers and the software would work the same (except that it would take longer). I was relieved to see that there was nothing OS dependent about these devices: no drivers necessary. I'm not entirely sure anymore, but I believe the USB version of the same barcode scanner didn't come with a separate power supply as the PS/2 version did and simply looked like a second keyboard to the PC.
But, aren't we all fixated on Microsoft? They've been the dominant force in the IT industry for the last two decades and any company ignores them at their peril, so why shouldn't Google and everyone else here be wary of their every move, especially when it's so big? You know they're up to no good. Also, Google does not have a track record that's anywhere near as controversial as Microsoft's.
Don't hold your breath. They don't have to, remember?
Yes, most people have probably heard that alternatives to Windows do exist, but I figure that unless any next version is outrageously worse than the previous one, most users will still be too lazy to jump ship. The overall effect reminds me of Al Gore's story of the frog that eventually gets cooked because it does not notice the gradual rise in water temperature. In this case, however, the consumers and the rest of the industry won't die, but they will be forever miserable unless the US government finally recognizes the situation for what it is, steps in and does something about it, like split up the company and open-source much of the source code.
Dedicated servers for each field office is out of the question,...
Well, how about just an old workstation at each remote site to run Linux on with Samba (assuming you're supporting M$ clients) and CUPS for file and printing services, while using rsync to synchronize the data with your centralized servers? You can even make additional automatic local backups to disk with things like faubackup or dirvish. It worked for me and you don't have to use such cheap hardware as long as I did.
But seriously, it sounds like your company followed some pretty bad advice. It may have allowed you to cut costs, but it also introduced a new set of problems for which there is no cheap and easy solution. Except perhaps what I've outlined above. Yes, strictly speaking thatt would mean adding "dedicated servers", but it would not be an expensive solution and it certainly sounds a lot less expensive to me than your current daily loss of productivity from 1,000 employees.
Yeah, but that was an episode in the animated series, which I considered a poor substitute even when I was a kid and they had just cancelled the original series a few years back. Therefore, you can't expect any self-respecting Trekkie to be familiar with such trivia.
Captain Kirk would not want to fly into such a cloud, especially at high speed, as it would eat away at the Enterprise's hull producing lots of gamma ray radiation. Definitely worse than a magnetic storm.
Why is information like this even considered newsworthy? M$ is legendary for being full of hot air and then continuing on with business as usual. Now, if they were suddenly to start acting according to such words in a significant way, that would be different. Don't hold your breath, though.
Your NTP setup is misconfigured if this is the case.
I don't know about that. I thought my/etc/ntp.conf was okay:
driftfile/var/lib/ntp/ntp.drift statsdir/var/log/ntpstats/ statistics loopstats peerstats clockstats filegen loopstats file loopstats type day enable filegen peerstats file peerstats type day enable filegen clockstats file clockstats type day enable server ntp.xs4all.nl server ntp2.xs4all.nl server ntp2-3.xs4all.nl server ntp2-4.xs4all.nl server ntp2.theinternetone.net server ntp2d.mcc.ac.uk server ntp2c.mcc.ac.uk server tock.fh-augsburg.de #server ntp1.altarisoluzione.com # Unreliable - jitter too high server ntp1.sandvika.net server ntp0-rz.rrze.uni-erlangen.de server pool.ntp.org server pool.ntp.org server 127.127.1.0 fudge 127.127.1.0 stratum 13
Then again, I could be wrong. Although xs4all.nl is my local ISP, ntpq -p always shows that the system is synchronized to something else. This is my home server that we're talking about, so I don't have the luxury of a second local NTPD. Also, I have an ADSL Internet connection, while my understanding is that NTPD does better with symmetric connections,
Slashdot Mirror
... so I don't see this as the end of some kind of fad. In the beginning it was easy for anybody to find articles on popular subjects that still needed lots of work (if they existed at all). However, as time passed and people continued to contribute, it naturally became increasingly likely that any particular subject would already have an article that was relatively complete. Consequently, it will become increasingly unlikely that the average person will be able to continue making as many meaningful contributions.
On the other hand, I spent about three years at WP and have witnessed a lot of impolite, petty and downright childish behavior among some of the most active contributors and administrators. As a result, overall quality is not what it could be. For instance, regarding scientific subjects -- especially biology -- I found it very frustrating that so many people regarded article format and personal interest to be more important than content and accuracy. Once this changes, though, WP will definitely become more valuable, but it will also become even more difficult for the average person to edit without being reverted.
As someone with a fair amount of experience with backups in corporate environments, I realized years ago that achieving the same thing at home with tapes was simply not practical. I'll assume you're using something like BSD or Linux like I am, so I'll ignore commercial backup software, but even then there's plenty left to be confused about.
/root, /tmp and /var) on a 4-disk RAID-5 array. This system performs very nicely, but the only thing I'm perhaps not 100% comfortable with is the fact that the backup partition is also located on the array.That may seem safe enough, but now I feel that maybe I should have used an extra disk, or even a pair of mirrored disks, for the backups instead.
First of all: hardware. Years ago, I gave tapes a try, but the only affordable drives I could find, from Onstream, kept breaking down on me and the tapes were not too cheap. I would have preferred DLT, but that technology was prohibitively expensive for home use. So, that left disk-based backups. The good thing is that disks are fast and the space is cheap these days.
Software. Mainly I use a backup package called faubackup, which I think is simple and easy to use. It's very economical with disk space because subsequent backups consist largely of hard links to files that were backed up previously and have have not been changed since. Data from remote machines is first copied to the backup server with rsync, after which that data is backed up depending on rsync's success. I use my own scripts to coordinate faubackup and rsync.
Redundancy. I'm luckily in that I also maintain similar servers for some friends in other parts of the country and have managed to convince them of the advantages of backing up our data to each other's servers. Rsync is really good for doing this, but obviously I leave out the directories with the bulky media files when copying data across the Internet (we all have ADSL with only 1 Mb of upload bandwidth).
Disks. Until recently I've always configured servers with two disks: one for the system and data and the other for backups only. It's a cheap solution that I've always been very pleased with. Since each of the two disks has hundreds of gigabytes of space available, I can afford to maintain many more backups than with a typical 21-tape strategy. The only problem that I've encountered so far is that moving the backups to a new disk can be very time-consuming: as opposed to copying only it's contents, you're forced to copy the entire partition over because of all the hard links it contains.
Alternative disk configuration. The last server I installed uses an SSD for it's boot and root file systems (using the 'noatime' partition attribute) and houses all of its data (along with
Amazing! I personally brought this story up in 2002: Build a Nuclear Fusion Reactor at Home. Back then, a number of very informative comments were made that only helped to confirm my suspicion that it will never work.
True, running your own mailserver is only half of the solution, but as more people do the same it will become less likely that any 3rd party mail servers will be involved in your email exchanges. Many of my friends have ADSL connections and also run their own private mail servers. In these cases, my exchanges with them are also encrypted.
... to maintain your own mail server.
First, chair jokes have become an important part of Slashdot culture and it would be a shame to lose that. Let's face it: Steve is funny in a way that I doubt any successor of his will ever be. They just won't be able to compete. I mean, Steve looks and acts like the 800-pound gorilla that is M$. Developers, developers, developers... He was born for this job!
Second, and more seriously, what's bad for M$ is good for us. Besides, you don't really think that anyone taking over from Steve will turn M$ into a kinder, gentler company, do you? No way! Anyone who does will know that if M$ is to keep raking in its billions, the company will have no choice but to defend its current monopoly.
Microsoft has been punished already. Time to move on.
Why? That would be applying different standards in different situations and thus be hypocritical of the EU. According to your view, any company that the EU government would first find guilty of abuse and force to pay a fine, would then have to be exempted from precisely the conditions dealing with market abuse that the EU say must be met to participate in public procurement procedures. That makes no sense at all... except perhaps to Microsoft.The other way around, it makes much more sense: I'll bet that it's not possible to apply this particular ban to a supplier *before* it has first been found guilty and fined for abuse!
If Heidi had been a member of a German conservative party and had been asking whether or not it was right for the EU to use Open Source Software, then I would indeed wonder who her campaign contributers were, seeing as these days it's mainly Microsoft that would stand to gain from such a measure.
However, seeing as she is actually a member of a more left wing party and her proposal only stands to disadvantage the software market's 800-pound gorilla, I seriously doubt that she's receiving any extraordinary monetary compensation for her efforts in this case.
So, you seem understand the principle of how campaign contributions can influence politicians, but have succeeded in applying it in exactly the wrong way; kind of like putting the left shoe on the right foot.
No, the question is, Why on Earth would I want to *buy* software -- from *&^! Microsoft! -- in order to avoid someone I don't even know and don't care about?
Has anyone here bothered to read any of Brian Herbert's Dune stories? I've read a few that are supposed to predate the stories in his father's novels. At first they seemed okay -- entertaining at least -- but then I started to get the feeling that it was really just pulp. To be sure, I decided to read Frank's first Dune book again. I hadn't read it in at least 15 years, but soon after I got started again it became clear to me why Frank was such a genius. I'm sure I've read at least as much sci-fi as most people here, but there is a quality to Frank's writing, particularly in these books, that I've not encountered in any other work of science-fiction or fantasy. It's not so much the plot, but the way the central characters develop, the different philosophies involved and the many layers of loyalties and complicated politics that make it all so fascinating. I ended up reading all six of Frank's books again and was even more impressed this time around because I understood and therefore could appreciate more of the books than before.
However, it's this difference -- the qualities that make Frank's writings stand out -- that are impossible to do justice to on the screen. Take any combination of movie director, actors, budget, producer, special effects and cinematographer you want, but if were to shoot a movie based on one of Frank's Dune books and then on one of Brian's, I'm pretty sure you'd see no difference. It's simply not possible to do Frank's genius any justice on the screen. He was brilliant for being a *novelist* -- not for being a playwright. So, forget the movie; just read the books again!
That's no longer considered a critical problem. First, everything that's in orbit and over 10 cm in size is already being tracked, and they're working on bringing that down to 1 cm. Therefore, if it's know what's on a collision course with the ribbon in advance, it's possible to simply move the ribbon out of the way in advance by moving the anchor at its base. One of the things that makes this approach feasible if the fact that most satellites and orbital debris is at 500-1700 km altitude -- a small fraction of the total length of the ribbon. Also, by doubling the width the ribbon between the above critical altitudes, it's possible to decrease the risk of a catastrophic failure due to an orbital object impact by another 30%.
Source: Edwards & Westling (2002).
Nope. That would weigh it down too much. The whole concept is only possible because, even if it's many thousands of kilometers long, a carbon-nanotube tether is still strong enough to support its own weight. Sure, it will be possible for it to support a few such counterweights if necessary -- a few more as extra tethers are added for strength -- but never as many as you suggest.
It may seem strange, but if you're a security professional and relish a severe challenge (or just want the money), then the Redmond campus may be just the place you want to be! However, after a while I can only imagine that the experience must feel more like beating your head against a wall.
... not read one of his books of failed to be impressed? I'm sure I've read most of his books, if not all (especially the ones he wrote on his own), but probably my favorite is "Fountains of Paradise" -- I can still remember so much of the story even though I last read it in the 1980s. Maybe not all of it, but who can forget the concept?! Okay, maybe he didn't think of this one himself, but if the space elevator ever becomes a reality, it'll probably be thanks to this book.
I'm going to miss him. He was one of those people who you've admired for so long that you hope they'll live forever. Of course, nobody ever does, so when people like Sir Arthur start to grow old and you hear that they're becoming weaker, you begin to dread the inevitable years in advance. A world without people like this is so much less interesting. Hell, I still hate the fact that Frank Zappa and Richard Feynman are no longer with us -- two of my other heros. Sir Arthur's passing is also going to take a very long time to get used to.
This article seems to suggest that a substantial number of Wikipedians would like to see more serious and less trivial content. But what about the more interesting articles that are being held back? For example, during the past two years I've tried very hard to advance a series of natural history articles to a higher level, paying particular attention to the taxonomy involved. Unfortunately, there seems to be little desire for a systematic and hierarchical approach in writing such articles. At least in my corner of WP, it's like there's a glass ceiling that most editors would rather not see anyone break through. If this trend continues, IMO large sections of WP will remain quite average at best.
I was unaware of this, but sadly I'm not surprised to hear it. At the time I was offered a choice between the keyboard wedge scanners and a USB variant thereof. I went for the former, fearing that the latter might end up needing Windows drivers. The USB version turned out to work like a keyboard anyway, but now it seems I was right to be suspicious of it.
To a PC, a barcode scanner is nothing strange: it looks and behaves exactly like a keyboard. The first barcode scanners I played around with even came with splitters so that you could attach them to the PS/2 port along with the keyboard. Those scanners also came with some templates (barcodes) so that you could set the barcode scanner to read the barcode type that you were using for your inventory. The rest is up to your Point-of-Sale software that only needs to support the principle. The cursor needs to start in a field where the barcode is filled in, it uses the barcode to look up the matching product in its database, it fills in the description and price and then jumps to the next product. In other words, if the scanner were to break down you could just as easily type in the human-readable codes on the barcode stickers and the software would work the same (except that it would take longer). I was relieved to see that there was nothing OS dependent about these devices: no drivers necessary. I'm not entirely sure anymore, but I believe the USB version of the same barcode scanner didn't come with a separate power supply as the PS/2 version did and simply looked like a second keyboard to the PC.
But, aren't we all fixated on Microsoft? They've been the dominant force in the IT industry for the last two decades and any company ignores them at their peril, so why shouldn't Google and everyone else here be wary of their every move, especially when it's so big? You know they're up to no good. Also, Google does not have a track record that's anywhere near as controversial as Microsoft's.
Don't hold your breath. They don't have to, remember?
Yes, most people have probably heard that alternatives to Windows do exist, but I figure that unless any next version is outrageously worse than the previous one, most users will still be too lazy to jump ship. The overall effect reminds me of Al Gore's story of the frog that eventually gets cooked because it does not notice the gradual rise in water temperature. In this case, however, the consumers and the rest of the industry won't die, but they will be forever miserable unless the US government finally recognizes the situation for what it is, steps in and does something about it, like split up the company and open-source much of the source code.
But seriously, it sounds like your company followed some pretty bad advice. It may have allowed you to cut costs, but it also introduced a new set of problems for which there is no cheap and easy solution. Except perhaps what I've outlined above. Yes, strictly speaking thatt would mean adding "dedicated servers", but it would not be an expensive solution and it certainly sounds a lot less expensive to me than your current daily loss of productivity from 1,000 employees.
Yeah, but that was an episode in the animated series, which I considered a poor substitute even when I was a kid and they had just cancelled the original series a few years back. Therefore, you can't expect any self-respecting Trekkie to be familiar with such trivia.
Captain Kirk would not want to fly into such a cloud, especially at high speed, as it would eat away at the Enterprise's hull producing lots of gamma ray radiation. Definitely worse than a magnetic storm.
Why is information like this even considered newsworthy? M$ is legendary for being full of hot air and then continuing on with business as usual. Now, if they were suddenly to start acting according to such words in a significant way, that would be different. Don't hold your breath, though.