At this rate the word "fuck" will eventually BE the entire English language in about 100 years.
I, personally, am not bothered by profanity. I happen to think it's quite useful in the right circumstances and sheds no light on the true intelligence or maturity of the poster. I've seen plenty of pedants on Slashdot who think that a large vocabulary, flawless grammar and punctuation indicate an intelligent person. (Kind of like you.) Sadly, it just points to a "book smart" person with no ability to have an original thought or come up with a brand new concept. True intelligence has nothing to do with what you learned in school. It has to do with the ability to work with your environment and turn elements of it to your advantage.
On the other hand, I've seen many very intelligent people who prefer to use profanity to lighten up their discourse. Too many "big words" make any topic boring to the average reader. One of the best college professors I ever had used to tell people to "Shut the fuck up! Who the fuck made you the teachah?!" all the time. I learned a great deal from that man and hold him in the highest regard. On the other hand, I can't tell you how many profs I had that didn't use profanity and failed to make any usable impression on my or my intellect.
If you really wanted to insult someone you could sit down and write out a logical argment that makes sense that can not be reputed....
If everyone in the world knew about it, it would get fixed in hours or at the most a day. At that point, the onus is on the admin to make sure that they've patched the hole. Then no one would use it... With Microsoft, you don't have that option. You have to wait for them to find (hah) and fix the hole. Remember, they are only going to fix it if it will severely impact their bottom line. They will drag their feet if they assume that it is'nt that big of a deal. They've done this before and they've been wrong every time. Sorry, but full disclosure wins out every time over security by obscurity.
It's been proven time and time again that open source software is more secure as long as it's properly managed and vigilantly kept up to date. On the other hand, the security by obscurity crowd continues to play the same, tired old message that proprietary systems are secure because people don't know about the exploits. Do you honestly think that the black hats are going to come out and say, "Umm... I found this really big gaping hole in Windows that allows me access to credit card DBs on a few major e-commerce sites. Just thought I'd tell you."? No! They're going to keep it to themselves until the damage has gone far beyond anything that open source would be vulnerable to. Not to mention the foot dragging that Microsoft tends to favor when it comes to releasing patches for security holes. Especially if it's going to mean that they are going to lose money. And THAT'S where the root of the problem is. As long as companies are in this for profit, the main focus is going to be making more money with as little expense as possible. This means ignoring security holes that haven't been made public. This means gnoring security holes in old versions of OSes and applications simply because they want to FORCE people to buy their new products. This means no longer providing updates (even if the security hole is glaring and widespread) if it will keep people from migrating to the new OS or application. I'd much rather see my government using OSS because it's safer, gets patched quickly and is FAR easier to manage than proprietary crap. Go astroturf elsewhere you Micro$oft goon. MS is losing this battle. It can't be won in any honest way.
I think that if Ogg Vorbis (and Theora for that matter) is to gain wide acceptance, these formats will need to be associated with something that "Joe User" can benefit from.
For example, if... 1....someone were to write a "Media System" layer to install over Windows 9x/2K/XP that would use those codecs to provide something similar to MythTV. 2. That system was as easy to install as Winamp. 3. The system provides a fullscreen mode that completely takes over the desktop. 4. The system would make it VERY easy to rip CDs and DVDs to any specified drive using Ogg Vorbis and Theora. (Default to those formats, but retain the ability to play back other non-free formats) 5. The system was easy to use. 6. The system does what it does very well. 7. The system was both free as in beer and speech.
It wouldn't take long for this project to gain momentum and make Ogg a houshold name. Especially if the program also analyzed the existing MP3s, MPEGS, DiVX files, etc... and pointed out how much less space the Ogg formats use. Just a thought.
As far as I can tell, GIF still has that one leg up on PNG. I haven't seen any version of PNG that can do animations and that is supported within a browser. Ideally, I'd still like to see an open source alternative to Flash that would allow one to create animations with synchronized sound. Oh well... I'm part way through my C++ book now.:)
Ballmer's memo comes down to this: "increase our advertising budget significantly for all our audiences."
So there you have it. No product. No technology. No innovation. Just advertising. I think that tells a lot about how Microsoft regards their consumers (that's the right word, I fear). If it works, maybe they are right.
My sentiments exactly. Microsoft isn't selling as well lately because their products are too expensive, lack anything compellingly new, and their license sucks. Not to mention that the economy is in bad shape. The sad thing is that if they spin their ad campaigns in the right way, they probably will increase sales. More than likely, they will turn to a campaign to make customers feel like they lack style or true "geekiness" because they don't have the latest version of Windows. This is truly sad.
On slashdot, anybody who doesn't toe the party line MUST a troll.
Is that a new sexual practice?;P
Seriously. A troll is someone who says something because they want a specific response. Typically it's calculated to agitate the largest number of people possible into a negative response. Given that MOST Slashdot readers are fans of *nix, your comments certainly will get a negative response. Assuming you are a regular reader of Slashdot, you would know this. Given those two assumptions, you willingly wrote something that you knew would agitate a negative response. Based on the definition of trolling, you WERE trolling. Welcome to the club dude. Troll on...:) BTW, I am not a troll despite what my Slashdot username might lead you to think.
You can have mine as soon as I'm done with it. That should be in about 4-5 years.
I happen to agree with the quote:
"No person is an island. All the fruits of all human endeavour belong to all humankind".
What point is there in doing something that will only be of benefit to yourself? Wouldn't you rather do something that you know is going to make a change for anyone? Something that has no barriers to access (ie. monetary)? That's why I work for a non-profit org even though I have skills that could get me into the corporate world for more pay. Money isn't everything.
Demonize, slander, and boycott, that's how the revolution will be won, eh?
Actually, that's pretty historically accurate. In every conflict between sides, the tactichas been to demonize the other side. A good example is the origin of paganism and satan as the horned beast. The catholic church was desperately trying to get money from as many people as possible, however they were failing in their attempt to get money from the country peasants (paisanos, which eventually got morphed into "pagans"). They tried to get the peasants interested in Catholicism and to donate money to the church, but the peasants didn't care and ignored them because they had their own simple religion (mostly superstitious beliefs about the earth gods). The only way the Catholics found that they could get rid of this nagging religion was to turn the peasant's gods into demons. Pan (the half man, half horse mythical being) was transformed into Satan for example. The Catholics made Satan seem terrifying to their followers. This made their followers chastise the peasants and eventually lead to the outlawing of their religion. In general, the peasants were agrarian and very peaceful. There were no human sacrifices or terrifying blood rituals. These were lies that the Catholic church put forward to make the peasants seem frightening and dissuade others from joining their religion.
The same thing is happening with Linux/Open Source today. You have the ubercrapitalists arging that the GNU GPL is bad for business and the closed, proprietary software is the one "true" way. The topics have shifted, but it's religiong nonetheless. Paganism didnt' die out, and neither will Open Source or Linux. But much like Paganism, OSS and Linux may not reach the heights of the mainstream until further down the road.
Dude... it's your own damn fault if you're using RH 7.2. RH 8.0 has that all sewn up and RH9 has the extra fixes for the rest of the system. Setting up a printer from the GUI on my RH8 box took me all of one minute. This is for an Epson Stylus Color 600. In 7.2 it took me quite a while to get it going, but CUPS certainly fixes the matter VERY nicely. BTW... that one minute inluded setting it up as a shared printer as well.
OK. I see what you mean now. I don't think there are any bootable CD distros out there that do that with CD-RW. Most of the ones I've seen use the HD in the system for persistent storage. It would be damn cool if someone did do it, but it would require that the kernel supports writing to the CD-RW in UDF format. It's on the way, but not here yet. Maybe I misread what you said earlier...
You don't need packet writing to use a CD-RW if you are using ISO9660. It just acts like a plain CD-R with the only difference being that you can erase and reuse it.
If you run Linux you can use 'cdrecord' to burn an ISO9660 image to a CD-RW to use it as a regular CD-R. Later on you can blank it with 'cdrecord' to reuse as something else. Once the cd devices are updated in the kernel to handle read/write, then you will be able to use packet writing with the UDF filesystem. But for now, ISO9660 works just fine. I *think* Nero Burning ROM for Windows can burn ISO9660 to CD-RW as well...
Back in my day, all we had was a 2400 modem and the "toy computer" of your choice (Atari ST or Amiga) and shell access to the campus mainframe. VMS in my case. It was grand. It was all we needed to get around:
-Usenet -FTP -Mail
I still remember using B.A.R.T. (Brode's Archive Retrieval Thang) from Umich to get my Atari ST software via e-mail in UUE files.
You younguns are spoiled with your web... and wireless... and laptops... and PDAs...;P
Here here! What you have said perfectly illustrates how it is that "middle-men" infect every sector of human society. These middle men have nothing to offer of any real worth. They simply repackage (ie. dress up the image) other people's work and claim to have something new, different or good for you. SOme examples:
The "Knowledge Manager" - This curious occupation *DID* at one point have validity. These were people who were charged with the task of taking the vast amounts of information that our digital culture has created and organizing that data. They SHOULD be a perfect blend between librarian and DB admin. In reality, most knowledge managers know nothing about technology, but argue vehemently that they should control the direction of its use in a company. Most of the KM trade journals I've looked at usually put the knowledge manager in the position of "knowing" more than the programmer or engineer about technology. Many illustrations in the articles show you a stylish, "professional" who is "leading" the lowly tech/admin/coder to building the next "great thing". Most of the KM journals themselves are extremely light on any disucssion of technology and put more emphasis on management. The mistaken assumption when it comes to KM today is that the "M" means managing people. It doesn not mean that at all... it means managing information. The middle men have worked their way into yet another promising field and "ponzied" it.
The "Employment Agency" - Today, employment agencies are one of the biggest businesses in the United States (and possible the rest of the capitalist world). They purport to connect a promising employee with an employer for a temporary period of time. This service takes money from both the employer and the employee. When the employment agency is actually competent with IT candidates, this can be somewhat beneficial. But look at the big picture. Take a ten mile step back and look at what's happening. These companies are making incredible amount of money by connecting people with jobs. Most of the jobs are temporary and both parties pay for the service. What's wrong with this picture? In reality, these companies aren't doing anything really productive and are getting a disproprtionately large amount of money for it. Again... the middle men make a grab for it.
When it comes to REAL IT folks, it's all about what you know in relation to technology and getting your hands dirty. Even if you are management.
Slashdot Mirror
to send a donation to xiph.org or towards the purchase of software that uses Ogg Vorbis. That will really screw their plans if enough of us do it.
Welcome to my friends list. (I like your SIG)
Welcome to my friend's list. :)
I, personally, am not bothered by profanity. I happen to think it's quite useful in the right circumstances and sheds no light on the true intelligence or maturity of the poster. I've seen plenty of pedants on Slashdot who think that a large vocabulary, flawless grammar and punctuation indicate an intelligent person. (Kind of like you.) Sadly, it just points to a "book smart" person with no ability to have an original thought or come up with a brand new concept. True intelligence has nothing to do with what you learned in school. It has to do with the ability to work with your environment and turn elements of it to your advantage.
On the other hand, I've seen many very intelligent people who prefer to use profanity to lighten up their discourse. Too many "big words" make any topic boring to the average reader. One of the best college professors I ever had used to tell people to "Shut the fuck up! Who the fuck made you the teachah?!" all the time. I learned a great deal from that man and hold him in the highest regard. On the other hand, I can't tell you how many profs I had that didn't use profanity and failed to make any usable impression on my or my intellect.
If you really wanted to insult someone you could sit down and write out a logical argment that makes sense that can not be reputed....
I'm not saying a word...
If everyone in the world knew about it, it would get fixed in hours or at the most a day. At that point, the onus is on the admin to make sure that they've patched the hole. Then no one would use it... With Microsoft, you don't have that option. You have to wait for them to find (hah) and fix the hole. Remember, they are only going to fix it if it will severely impact their bottom line. They will drag their feet if they assume that it is'nt that big of a deal. They've done this before and they've been wrong every time. Sorry, but full disclosure wins out every time over security by obscurity.
Dudes... settle down. This is ONLY Slashdot after all.
You're a fucking idiot.
It's been proven time and time again that open source software is more secure as long as it's properly managed and vigilantly kept up to date. On the other hand, the security by obscurity crowd continues to play the same, tired old message that proprietary systems are secure because people don't know about the exploits. Do you honestly think that the black hats are going to come out and say, "Umm... I found this really big gaping hole in Windows that allows me access to credit card DBs on a few major e-commerce sites. Just thought I'd tell you."? No! They're going to keep it to themselves until the damage has gone far beyond anything that open source would be vulnerable to. Not to mention the foot dragging that Microsoft tends to favor when it comes to releasing patches for security holes. Especially if it's going to mean that they are going to lose money. And THAT'S where the root of the problem is. As long as companies are in this for profit, the main focus is going to be making more money with as little expense as possible. This means ignoring security holes that haven't been made public. This means gnoring security holes in old versions of OSes and applications simply because they want to FORCE people to buy their new products. This means no longer providing updates (even if the security hole is glaring and widespread) if it will keep people from migrating to the new OS or application. I'd much rather see my government using OSS because it's safer, gets patched quickly and is FAR easier to manage than proprietary crap. Go astroturf elsewhere you Micro$oft goon. MS is losing this battle. It can't be won in any honest way.
I think I would have to go withe option A. This is one of my favorite pastimes when I'm not coding something. :)
I think that if Ogg Vorbis (and Theora for that matter) is to gain wide acceptance, these formats will need to be associated with something that "Joe User" can benefit from.
...someone were to write a "Media System" layer to install over Windows 9x/2K/XP that would use those codecs to provide something similar to MythTV.
For example, if...
1.
2. That system was as easy to install as Winamp.
3. The system provides a fullscreen mode that completely takes over the desktop.
4. The system would make it VERY easy to rip CDs and DVDs to any specified drive using Ogg Vorbis and Theora. (Default to those formats, but retain the ability to play back other non-free formats)
5. The system was easy to use.
6. The system does what it does very well.
7. The system was both free as in beer and speech.
It wouldn't take long for this project to gain momentum and make Ogg a houshold name. Especially if the program also analyzed the existing MP3s, MPEGS, DiVX files, etc... and pointed out how much less space the Ogg formats use. Just a thought.
don't forget "...pinin' for the fjords" as well.
As far as I can tell, GIF still has that one leg up on PNG. I haven't seen any version of PNG that can do animations and that is supported within a browser. Ideally, I'd still like to see an open source alternative to Flash that would allow one to create animations with synchronized sound. Oh well... I'm part way through my C++ book now. :)
So would you call a service like that "teleport" Poonster? And how soon would pimps and hookers be crying DMCA violation? ;P
Ballmer's memo comes down to this: "increase our advertising budget significantly for all our audiences."
So there you have it. No product. No technology. No innovation. Just advertising. I think that tells a lot about how Microsoft regards their consumers (that's the right word, I fear). If it works, maybe they are right.
My sentiments exactly. Microsoft isn't selling as well lately because their products are too expensive, lack anything compellingly new, and their license sucks. Not to mention that the economy is in bad shape. The sad thing is that if they spin their ad campaigns in the right way, they probably will increase sales. More than likely, they will turn to a campaign to make customers feel like they lack style or true "geekiness" because they don't have the latest version of Windows. This is truly sad.
Is that a new sexual practice? ;P
Seriously. A troll is someone who says something because they want a specific response. Typically it's calculated to agitate the largest number of people possible into a negative response. Given that MOST Slashdot readers are fans of *nix, your comments certainly will get a negative response. Assuming you are a regular reader of Slashdot, you would know this. Given those two assumptions, you willingly wrote something that you knew would agitate a negative response. Based on the definition of trolling, you WERE trolling. Welcome to the club dude. Troll on... :) BTW, I am not a troll despite what my Slashdot username might lead you to think.
You can have mine as soon as I'm done with it. That should be in about 4-5 years.
I happen to agree with the quote:
"No person is an island. All the fruits of all human endeavour belong to all humankind".
What point is there in doing something that will only be of benefit to yourself? Wouldn't you rather do something that you know is going to make a change for anyone? Something that has no barriers to access (ie. monetary)? That's why I work for a non-profit org even though I have skills that could get me into the corporate world for more pay. Money isn't everything.
Actually, that's pretty historically accurate. In every conflict between sides, the tactichas been to demonize the other side. A good example is the origin of paganism and satan as the horned beast. The catholic church was desperately trying to get money from as many people as possible, however they were failing in their attempt to get money from the country peasants (paisanos, which eventually got morphed into "pagans"). They tried to get the peasants interested in Catholicism and to donate money to the church, but the peasants didn't care and ignored them because they had their own simple religion (mostly superstitious beliefs about the earth gods). The only way the Catholics found that they could get rid of this nagging religion was to turn the peasant's gods into demons. Pan (the half man, half horse mythical being) was transformed into Satan for example. The Catholics made Satan seem terrifying to their followers. This made their followers chastise the peasants and eventually lead to the outlawing of their religion. In general, the peasants were agrarian and very peaceful. There were no human sacrifices or terrifying blood rituals. These were lies that the Catholic church put forward to make the peasants seem frightening and dissuade others from joining their religion.
The same thing is happening with Linux/Open Source today. You have the ubercrapitalists arging that the GNU GPL is bad for business and the closed, proprietary software is the one "true" way. The topics have shifted, but it's religiong nonetheless. Paganism didnt' die out, and neither will Open Source or Linux. But much like Paganism, OSS and Linux may not reach the heights of the mainstream until further down the road.
You missed a step:
1. Plug in Printer
2. Insert driver CD if prompted
3. Profit! (for Bill Gates anyway)
4. Select "Print" from menu, click OK
This troll brought to you by the number 3 and the letter A!
Dude... it's your own damn fault if you're using RH 7.2. RH 8.0 has that all sewn up and RH9 has the extra fixes for the rest of the system. Setting up a printer from the GUI on my RH8 box took me all of one minute. This is for an Epson Stylus Color 600. In 7.2 it took me quite a while to get it going, but CUPS certainly fixes the matter VERY nicely. BTW... that one minute inluded setting it up as a shared printer as well.
OK. I see what you mean now. I don't think there are any bootable CD distros out there that do that with CD-RW. Most of the ones I've seen use the HD in the system for persistent storage. It would be damn cool if someone did do it, but it would require that the kernel supports writing to the CD-RW in UDF format. It's on the way, but not here yet. Maybe I misread what you said earlier...
You don't need packet writing to use a CD-RW if you are using ISO9660. It just acts like a plain CD-R with the only difference being that you can erase and reuse it.
Put that crack pipe down. It's clouding your reasoning.
If you run Linux you can use 'cdrecord' to burn an ISO9660 image to a CD-RW to use it as a regular CD-R. Later on you can blank it with 'cdrecord' to reuse as something else. Once the cd devices are updated in the kernel to handle read/write, then you will be able to use packet writing with the UDF filesystem. But for now, ISO9660 works just fine. I *think* Nero Burning ROM for Windows can burn ISO9660 to CD-RW as well...
Who said you need tact to be a lawyer? ;P
Back in my day, all we had was a 2400 modem and the "toy computer" of your choice (Atari ST or Amiga) and shell access to the campus mainframe. VMS in my case. It was grand. It was all we needed to get around:
;P
-Usenet
-FTP
-Mail
I still remember using B.A.R.T. (Brode's Archive Retrieval Thang) from Umich to get my Atari ST software via e-mail in UUE files.
You younguns are spoiled with your web... and wireless... and laptops... and PDAs...
Here here! What you have said perfectly illustrates how it is that "middle-men" infect every sector of human society. These middle men have nothing to offer of any real worth. They simply repackage (ie. dress up the image) other people's work and claim to have something new, different or good for you. SOme examples:
The "Knowledge Manager" - This curious occupation *DID* at one point have validity. These were people who were charged with the task of taking the vast amounts of information that our digital culture has created and organizing that data. They SHOULD be a perfect blend between librarian and DB admin. In reality, most knowledge managers know nothing about technology, but argue vehemently that they should control the direction of its use in a company. Most of the KM trade journals I've looked at usually put the knowledge manager in the position of "knowing" more than the programmer or engineer about technology. Many illustrations in the articles show you a stylish, "professional" who is "leading" the lowly tech/admin/coder to building the next "great thing". Most of the KM journals themselves are extremely light on any disucssion of technology and put more emphasis on management. The mistaken assumption when it comes to KM today is that the "M" means managing people. It doesn not mean that at all... it means managing information. The middle men have worked their way into yet another promising field and "ponzied" it.
The "Employment Agency" - Today, employment agencies are one of the biggest businesses in the United States (and possible the rest of the capitalist world). They purport to connect a promising employee with an employer for a temporary period of time. This service takes money from both the employer and the employee. When the employment agency is actually competent with IT candidates, this can be somewhat beneficial. But look at the big picture. Take a ten mile step back and look at what's happening. These companies are making incredible amount of money by connecting people with jobs. Most of the jobs are temporary and both parties pay for the service. What's wrong with this picture? In reality, these companies aren't doing anything really productive and are getting a disproprtionately large amount of money for it. Again... the middle men make a grab for it.
When it comes to REAL IT folks, it's all about what you know in relation to technology and getting your hands dirty. Even if you are management.