It's nice that you can be modded up for the politically correct stance defending grandmothers, but it's also obvious that you are smoking crack. My mother (a grandma) can barely program a VCR and her computer skills are limited to reading e-mail (however she can't print e-mail or send e-mail). My grandmother (a great grandmother) can't operate a TV or a VCR at all.
So while I'm sure there are a few grandmothers out there who are genius UNIX hackers, I suspect they are few and far between. Face it - most old people have trouble adapting to new technology. You insult our intelligence when you make a whiny post criticizing the OP for stating something that everyone knows is true.
If his boss was such a poor performer, his failures would have made themselves evident over time.
The guy was a 33-year veteran of the department!
This guy is a doob. Look at the letters he sent to the department, warning about his boss' negligence. They say things like "George exhibits a lack of leadership" and "We need to have more meetings." At what point did he send them a letter saying "My boss does no work. He just plays solitaire all day"?
Maybe for home users. Any good firewall blocks all packets (traveling in any direction) by default. The better packet filtering docs for Linux or BSD all start with default deny rules. Any sane company with a firewall will only allow a few outgoing ports.
Yeah, well the article seemed to be talking about home users didn't it?
And BTW, I think you'll find that there's tons of companies out there with a wildcard accept+NAT rule down at the bottom of their outgoing policy.
First of all, the linked article simply describes a firewall blocking some outgoing traffic with easy rate limit rules (i.e. no email after x messages sent in y amount of time). There's no need to call it a reverse firewall. It's a firewall, plain and simple
I think it's like a firewall configured in reverse. It's not a new type of firewall; it's just a different way of configuring a firewall.
Redhat most definately does not give their profits to their investors; they are focused, like most tech companies, on growth, so they reinvest it in the company.
Go read Redhat's SEC filings (I did). They have about 90% of their money invested in bonds and other safe investments while only 10% is being spent on software development, sales, and marketing.
Why do they keep such a large war chest? Maybe it's because at one point, they were burning money at a rate of > $100M per year. Now they are more fiscally responsible, so suddenly they have more money than they know what to do with.
Some people, especially younger users, seem to think GUI==good automatically, and thus, the more eye candy a UI has, the better it must be. [...] Even though all the stuff just gets in the way, and he has to go down through 4 or 5 levels of menus and/or screens to do the simplest thing.
On the other hand, most of people I work with use text mode on Linux, and they don't function all that efficiently either. They are particularly slow at directory navigation (which I have optimized with aliases). Whenever I want to show them something on their computer, I get so sick of watching them navigate the source tree that I end up going back to look it up on my computer.
Oh, and did I mention the city planners in Vancouver seem to have a hate-on for cars and are eternally doing everything in their power to discourage people from using them?
Except extending the skytrain.:-)
Seriously though, having no highways within Vancouver city limits certainly adds a unique dynamic. Residents of the west side rarely even enter the east side of the city.
Of course, I went and believed a person from B.C. who told me this and now I look it up and much to my chagrin....... It ain't so.
That study is probably misleading in this case because it doesn't take into account the local pay scale. Vancouver is still damned expensive. The houses cost a fortune, gas costs 10% more than Eastern Canada due to taxes & transportation, groceries cost more due to transportation and because the union at Safeway has such a sweet deal, and golf costs 20% more. Internet costs the same though.
Asimov wrote about a hundred stories exploring different ways in which these three laws could lead to interesting/dangerous situations. I think Asimov was doing all he could to make it clear that these three laws were not perfect.
First, my opinion is that Red Hat is coming back from this hardship nicely. They are doing an excellent job of determining where their holes in product lines are and filling them.
I was one of the very vocal opponents of Red Hat dropping their standard distro in favor of Fedora, but I have largely changed my mind.
Of course they decided to restructure their product line. Revenue from the retail products didn't make a dent in their operating costs, whereas enterprise sales have quadrupled in 4 years.
But still, keep in mind that RedHat isn't really a software company just yet. With 90% of their >$1B capital invested in (and 3/4ths of their $14M profit coming from) bonds and other securities, they are still more of an underperforming mutual fund than a successful company.
But it definitely seems likely that a couple of years from now their profit from RHEL is going to overtake the investment revenue.
I like that the rebuttal has no scientific value but is still rated +5 Insightful. Nothing about thermodynamics, just the supposed emotions of toasted bread.
A joke theory cannot be rebutted by a scientific response. A joke theory can only be refuted by a better joke.
NEWSFLASH: most of the world doesn't speak english natively, and therefore see no connotation in the name "jackito" Well, my first thought was jackito = baby Michael Jackson.
Michael Jackson (a.k.a. Jacko) is/was popular all over the world, and most people know that ito is a diminuitive in Spanish.
Hardware, too, will be "open sourced" when molecular manufacturing "replicators" are as common as the computer-on-every-desktop (in less than 20 years).
Molecular manufacturing replicators... sounds cool! I'll go out and buy one as soon as my robot servant comes back with my flying car.
Well... have you seen the source code to telnetd from a few years ago? (before they patched the exploits) Some versions of telnet contain a parameter called NET_SLACK (which I seem to remember was set to ~4kb). And what, pray tell, does this parameter do?
Well, it appears that at some point someone noticed that heavy traffic could cause the send buffer to overflow, causing telnetd to crash. And thus the buffer size was increased by NET_SLACK bytes so that if the buffer overflowed, it wouldn't do any harm. (Of course, this doesn't prevent someone from *deliberately* overflowing the buffer by more than NET_SLACK.)
"Until telnetd is totally removed (not just turned off) from Linux, Linux will not be secure."
So you're saying Linux is secure? Good. You see, it's been a few years since telnetd was installed in a base Linux install. I'd say that qualifies as "totally removed".
Setting aside, for the moment, whether the original statement has any merit, I just want to know... how does a poster get modded up to +4 insightful for concluding that if A=>B then B=>A?
Congress has talked about doing away with bundling, letting subscribers pick and choose channels. If that happens, watch the crud channels die away as no one subscribes to them - accentuating this apparent trend of fewer channels. The ironic part is that those channels that may not get the audience now may in the future under a law like this thrive, driving other channels out. Something else that I find ironic is such a scheme would promote a free market in cable channels - quality would matter again. If Congress doesn't pass this law though I suspect it will only be because of contributions from 'free market' capitalists heading these cable companies.
You have a point, although it is only half right. The fact is, there is only a limited viewership to go around. If the number of channels increases, the budget of each channel must decrease or the cost must increase. You may have already noticed that the budge of the big networks has gone down, and they are increasingly focusing on cheap programming, such as reality tv and game shows.
Bundling is just an efficient way to support channels that have limited viewership. Chances are, the distributers pay less money for these channels as well. Even with the popular channels, it is more effective to distribute the cost among those who are willing to pay $0.50 for the channel as well as those who are willing to pay $2. Obviously the costs still go up a bit, but the distributors are gambling that you would rather pay $3 for 1 channel you want and 3 you might watch occasionally instead of $2.50 just for the one you want.
-a
Re:Sports writer says: ... most powerful movie ...
on
Fahrenheit 9/11 Discussion
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Of course they like movies, and the prestige of the Cannes festival. But they're also quite far from the French-bashing set of Americans, if they're not downright Franfophiles.
You know, this idea of labelling anyone who drinks a glass of wine or eats french toast or (god forbid) attends a film festival in France as a francophile (in a pejoritive sense) is ridiculous. About as ridiculous as it would be to label everyone who likes kids as a pedophile.
1) 10 men killed 100 men. 2) 10 patriots successfully defeated a horde of barbarous invaders, killing 100 of them. 3) We regret to report that 100 freedom fighters were killed by government thugs today. 10 members of the government's death squad brutally murdered 100 loyalists.
I think what you mean to say is that purely objective reporting cannot affect us. We will not appreciate the context.
Because your claim that the "objective" version must be without context is wrong. You deliberately made statement 1 contain less information than the other two, when it could have said "10 government loyalists defeated 100 rebels." You could even add which side attacked the other (which is unclear from your descriptions above).
-a
Re:Sports writer says: ... most powerful movie ...
on
Fahrenheit 9/11 Discussion
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
While there's a plurality of Americans on the jury, the fact that they're on the jury of the French film festival gives pretty good odds they're Francophiles, and are far from the Americans who are off eating "freedom toast" for breakfast and switching to Californian wine.
Right... they're at Cannes because they're Francophiles and not because it's the most prominent film festival in the world.
Last thing - if you are going to post your resume, do it on a domain that doesn't have anything else on it. Nothing like finding a resume in www.yourdomain.com/resume and when the HR folks go up a level and find a blog talking about sex with a different college chick every night. Your main page is pretty tame, but I didn't probe too deep.
Hehe... yeah I've done that before. Sometimes we get job applicants with some pretty wierd fetishes. (I haven't received any resumes hosted on the goatse domain yet, though.)
Not having any computer intelligence does not make a person "below average".
Hmmm... well actually, given that some people do have computer intelligence, not having any computer intelligence does make you below average in terms of computer intelligence.
28 programs is reasonable. I am a computer repair technician, and spend every day cleaning up this garbage for people. If you count the cookies, and not just actual programs, then the average user has over one hundred spyware items.
Yeah, but you (and the other repair techs who replied) only see computers that are already experiencing technical difficulties (and that are mostly owned by computer neophytes).
Slashdot Mirror
It's nice that you can be modded up for the politically correct stance defending grandmothers, but it's also obvious that you are smoking crack. My mother (a grandma) can barely program a VCR and her computer skills are limited to reading e-mail (however she can't print e-mail or send e-mail). My grandmother (a great grandmother) can't operate a TV or a VCR at all.
So while I'm sure there are a few grandmothers out there who are genius UNIX hackers, I suspect they are few and far between. Face it - most old people have trouble adapting to new technology. You insult our intelligence when you make a whiny post criticizing the OP for stating something that everyone knows is true.
-a
If his boss was such a poor performer, his failures would have made themselves evident over time.
The guy was a 33-year veteran of the department!
This guy is a doob. Look at the letters he sent to the department, warning about his boss' negligence. They say things like "George exhibits a lack of leadership" and "We need to have more meetings." At what point did he send them a letter saying "My boss does no work. He just plays solitaire all day"?
-a
Sal^H^H^HJoe
How come guys like this are always posting from like VT-52 terminals or something?
-a
Maybe for home users. Any good firewall blocks all packets (traveling in any direction) by default. The better packet filtering docs for Linux or BSD all start with default deny rules. Any sane company with a firewall will only allow a few outgoing ports.
Yeah, well the article seemed to be talking about home users didn't it?
And BTW, I think you'll find that there's tons of companies out there with a wildcard accept+NAT rule down at the bottom of their outgoing policy.
-a
First of all, the linked article simply describes a firewall blocking some outgoing traffic with easy rate limit rules (i.e. no email after x messages sent in y amount of time). There's no need to call it a reverse firewall. It's a firewall, plain and simple
I think it's like a firewall configured in reverse. It's not a new type of firewall; it's just a different way of configuring a firewall.
-a
Redhat most definately does not give their profits to their investors; they are focused, like most tech companies, on growth, so they reinvest it in the company.
Go read Redhat's SEC filings (I did). They have about 90% of their money invested in bonds and other safe investments while only 10% is being spent on software development, sales, and marketing.
Why do they keep such a large war chest? Maybe it's because at one point, they were burning money at a rate of > $100M per year. Now they are more fiscally responsible, so suddenly they have more money than they know what to do with.
-a
Some people, especially younger users, seem to think GUI==good automatically, and thus, the more eye candy a UI has, the better it must be. [...] Even though all the stuff just gets in the way, and he has to go down through 4 or 5 levels of menus and/or screens to do the simplest thing.
On the other hand, most of people I work with use text mode on Linux, and they don't function all that efficiently either. They are particularly slow at directory navigation (which I have optimized with aliases). Whenever I want to show them something on their computer, I get so sick of watching them navigate the source tree that I end up going back to look it up on my computer.
-a
Oh, and did I mention the city planners in Vancouver seem to have a hate-on for cars and are eternally doing everything in their power to discourage people from using them?
:-)
Except extending the skytrain.
Seriously though, having no highways within Vancouver city limits certainly adds a unique dynamic. Residents of the west side rarely even enter the east side of the city.
-a
Of course, I went and believed a person from B.C. who told me this and now I look it up and much to my chagrin....... It ain't so.
That study is probably misleading in this case because it doesn't take into account the local pay scale. Vancouver is still damned expensive. The houses cost a fortune, gas costs 10% more than Eastern Canada due to taxes & transportation, groceries cost more due to transportation and because the union at Safeway has such a sweet deal, and golf costs 20% more. Internet costs the same though.
-a
Asimov wrote about a hundred stories exploring different ways in which these three laws could lead to interesting/dangerous situations. I think Asimov was doing all he could to make it clear that these three laws were not perfect.
Shouldn't it be: "3 laws considered harmful"?
(Hey, it's still better than "3 laws unsafe".)
-a
First, my opinion is that Red Hat is coming back from this hardship nicely. They are doing an excellent job of determining where their holes in product lines are and filling them.
I was one of the very vocal opponents of Red Hat dropping their standard distro in favor of Fedora, but I have largely changed my mind.
Of course they decided to restructure their product line. Revenue from the retail products didn't make a dent in their operating costs, whereas enterprise sales have quadrupled in 4 years.
But still, keep in mind that RedHat isn't really a software company just yet. With 90% of their >$1B capital invested in (and 3/4ths of their $14M profit coming from) bonds and other securities, they are still more of an underperforming mutual fund than a successful company.
But it definitely seems likely that a couple of years from now their profit from RHEL is going to overtake the investment revenue.
-a
I like that the rebuttal has no scientific value but is still rated +5 Insightful. Nothing about thermodynamics, just the supposed emotions of toasted bread.
A joke theory cannot be rebutted by a scientific response. A joke theory can only be refuted by a better joke.
-a
NEWSFLASH: most of the world doesn't speak english natively, and therefore see no connotation in the name "jackito"
Well, my first thought was jackito = baby Michael Jackson.
Michael Jackson (a.k.a. Jacko) is/was popular all over the world, and most people know that ito is a diminuitive in Spanish.
-a
Hardware, too, will be "open sourced" when molecular manufacturing "replicators" are as common as the computer-on-every-desktop (in less than 20 years).
Molecular manufacturing replicators... sounds cool! I'll go out and buy one as soon as my robot servant comes back with my flying car.
-a
You have to wonder why anyone listens to them at all when any company can drop 33% because it's a few cents off in it's expected earnings.
That only happens when the market is expecting them to beat the official expected earnings figures.
-a
When was the last time telnet was exploitable?
Well... have you seen the source code to telnetd from a few years ago? (before they patched the exploits) Some versions of telnet contain a parameter called NET_SLACK (which I seem to remember was set to ~4kb). And what, pray tell, does this parameter do?
Well, it appears that at some point someone noticed that heavy traffic could cause the send buffer to overflow, causing telnetd to crash. And thus the buffer size was increased by NET_SLACK bytes so that if the buffer overflowed, it wouldn't do any harm. (Of course, this doesn't prevent someone from *deliberately* overflowing the buffer by more than NET_SLACK.)
-a
"Until telnetd is totally removed (not just turned off) from Linux, Linux will not be secure."
So you're saying Linux is secure? Good. You see, it's been a few years since telnetd was installed in a base Linux install. I'd say that qualifies as "totally removed".
Setting aside, for the moment, whether the original statement has any merit, I just want to know... how does a poster get modded up to +4 insightful for concluding that if A=>B then B=>A?
-a
Congress has talked about doing away with bundling, letting subscribers pick and choose channels. If that happens, watch the crud channels die away as no one subscribes to them - accentuating this apparent trend of fewer channels. The ironic part is that those channels that may not get the audience now may in the future under a law like this thrive, driving other channels out. Something else that I find ironic is such a scheme would promote a free market in cable channels - quality would matter again. If Congress doesn't pass this law though I suspect it will only be because of contributions from 'free market' capitalists heading these cable companies.
You have a point, although it is only half right. The fact is, there is only a limited viewership to go around. If the number of channels increases, the budget of each channel must decrease or the cost must increase. You may have already noticed that the budge of the big networks has gone down, and they are increasingly focusing on cheap programming, such as reality tv and game shows.
Bundling is just an efficient way to support channels that have limited viewership. Chances are, the distributers pay less money for these channels as well. Even with the popular channels, it is more effective to distribute the cost among those who are willing to pay $0.50 for the channel as well as those who are willing to pay $2. Obviously the costs still go up a bit, but the distributors are gambling that you would rather pay $3 for 1 channel you want and 3 you might watch occasionally instead of $2.50 just for the one you want.
-a
Of course they like movies, and the prestige of the Cannes festival. But they're also quite far from the French-bashing set of Americans, if they're not downright Franfophiles.
You know, this idea of labelling anyone who drinks a glass of wine or eats french toast or (god forbid) attends a film festival in France as a francophile (in a pejoritive sense) is ridiculous. About as ridiculous as it would be to label everyone who likes kids as a pedophile.
-a
1) 10 men killed 100 men.
2) 10 patriots successfully defeated a horde of barbarous invaders, killing 100 of them.
3) We regret to report that 100 freedom fighters were killed by government thugs today. 10 members of the government's death squad brutally murdered 100 loyalists.
I think what you mean to say is that purely objective reporting cannot affect us. We will not appreciate the context.
Because your claim that the "objective" version must be without context is wrong. You deliberately made statement 1 contain less information than the other two, when it could have said "10 government loyalists defeated 100 rebels." You could even add which side attacked the other (which is unclear from your descriptions above).
-a
While there's a plurality of Americans on the jury, the fact that they're on the jury of the French film festival gives pretty good odds they're Francophiles, and are far from the Americans who are off eating "freedom toast" for breakfast and switching to Californian wine.
Right... they're at Cannes because they're Francophiles and not because it's the most prominent film festival in the world.
-a
Last thing - if you are going to post your resume, do it on a domain that doesn't have anything else on it. Nothing like finding a resume in www.yourdomain.com/resume and when the HR folks go up a level and find a blog talking about sex with a different college chick every night. Your main page is pretty tame, but I didn't probe too deep.
Hehe... yeah I've done that before. Sometimes we get job applicants with some pretty wierd fetishes. (I haven't received any resumes hosted on the goatse domain yet, though.)
-a
Not having any computer intelligence does not make a person "below average".
Hmmm... well actually, given that some people do have computer intelligence, not having any computer intelligence does make you below average in terms of computer intelligence.
-a
Excuse me - most computers ARE owned by "computer neophytes" by definition.
Neophyte means "newly converted". I don't see how that follows from the definition.
-a
28 programs is reasonable. I am a computer repair technician, and spend every day cleaning up this garbage for people. If you count the cookies, and not just actual programs, then the average user has over one hundred spyware items.
Yeah, but you (and the other repair techs who replied) only see computers that are already experiencing technical difficulties (and that are mostly owned by computer neophytes).
-a