I seemed to feel a tone of 'manifest destiny' in the article. Is it just me who believes that philosophy is completely irrelevant to Linux?
We don't NEED to gain market share. We don't NEED to singlehandedly supplant Windows in order to be successful. In fact, if Linux does supplant Windows, it's just going to become the next widely-hated major OS of the time, until someone else comes along and supplants Linux. Doesn't sound like fun to me.
What goals does the Linux community have, other than supplanting Windows? Hrm.... creating an autonymously stable and useful operating system. Showing the Windows world what it's like to build an OS that interoperates with the majority of standards out there. Tons of others.... Why do we feel this conquistador-like goal to take over the OS world? It seems bullish and idiotic to me. There are much better things we can accomplish, cooperatively, when we're not wasting our time trying to dominate. If we keep this up for too long, Linux really will be the next Windows, in all the worst ways.
I really can't find any place in my heart to take sides with the people yelling about having to pay for this service. I run a fairly well-sized free hosting service that offers some similar functionality, and I know personally how much work, time, and money out of my pocket goes into running this sort of system. I know that as my userbase grows above its measely 1500-user count it's at now, there's no way I'll be able to afford to continue the services I'm offering completely for free. Apple is in the same boat - They're obviously paying a number of people to run the iTools service, paying for hardware and bandwidth, and raking up a huge bill. Sure, the iTools system can be a great community-builder, but it can still be a great community-builder when their users are paying only about $8 a month for the services being offered.
To those of you who bitch about services being generously provided for free, get a clue. Better yet, how bout you try to set up a service of similar caliber and see how much it costs you to run 'for free'? You'd probably gain a little bit of respect for the amount of work that Apple has put into their system, for you.
ehhhh, sort of.... but that's too easy to detect.. even search engines pick it up! Random background images that are so dark that 90% of the users can't see them works a lot better, and is undetectable by search engines. Now if you did an image filter from a webcam to make it super-dark and had THAT as your background... THAT would be fun:) I just never felt motivated enough to write a piece to use libjpeg in such a way:)
Heh, my favorite was on black-background pages, having a random background image with an embossed super-dark-grey color... so only people in 16bit+ color COULD see it, if the brightness and contrast was high enough.. and once they did see it, it'd still be hard to discern.:)
I remember putting a little easter egg into an undisclosed "mature webcam site" that would bring up the webcam of the NOC... I'm sure that nearly 3 years later it's gone, though... especially considering that the webcam of the NOC has changed IPs.:(
Geo Metro with a tune-up. Including the tune-up, it might cost you $250.:) Good mileage (45-55 mpg), but power is gonna suck. 55 horsepower.
Late-80's fuel-injected Honda Civic 5-speed with the A/C compressor belt removed... 35mpg city, 40-45 highway. Had one for many years. Absolutely loved it. It'll do 80mph very comfortably and top out about 100mph. Even when it was out of tune and needed work, I got 0.00% emissions across the board. Extremely clean-burning car. 95 horsepower.
Civic HX w/manual transmission... They've made the HX for like 8 years, so it's a VERY established car. Uses a variable 3- or 4- valve per cylinder combustion implementation (VTEC variant) in order to yield excellent combustion efficiency with near-zero unburnt gasoline. Since it still has the good ole' 4 valve per cylinder setup available for high-load situations, you can floor it and still get decent pickup and ~110mph top speed. 40mpg or more, unless you don't know how to drive. If you also unhook the belt to your A/C compressor, you will probably be able to hit 50mpg on highway. Their transmissions are so well-made that they're often fitted onto performance Civics, since they've got excellent gearing and are practically indestructable. This vehicle is still cheaper than the hybrids of all manufacturers by a few thousand bucks. about 110 horsepower, if I remember correctly.
A small-displacement motorcycle! Get a 250-400cc street bike that has some decent horsepower and is light-weight and you'll get 70mpg every day of the week. It'd also save you a TON of money, as you can easily pick up such bikes new for as low as $5000. Anywhere from 18 to 30 horsepower. 1/2 the hp of the metro with 1/6 of the weight... these are no slouches when it comes to acceleration. Top speed will range from 60mph to 80mph, depending on the bike's design.
http://www.obd-2.com/ is your answer. About $150 and you can interface with any of the 3 main OBD-II interfacing protocols. Downloadable updates. Error code sets for your manufacturer. Tons of information. And the author has a very impressive resume when it comes to automotive and computer diagnostic design!
Mix this with a little bit of community-brainstorming on an automotive message board, and most car problems can be solved.Not having the tools to fix something is a whole other issue:) Software has a hard time transforming into a torque wrench!
Yeah, it's a patent-law versus GPL thing, but (at least to me) it appears to be cut-and-dry. Linux existed, with its use of the (L)GPL as its license. SCC held their patent and chose to modify Linux to make use of their technology. They are a 'consumer' of Linux, and Linux is NOT a consumer of their technology. They are, before any consideration of patent law is considered, required to comply with the GPL in regards to adding anything to Linux.
So they (we assume consciously) chose to work their code into Linux and redistribute it. This action implies intent to comply with the GPL. Considering the specific requirements of the GPL in regards to patents (must be royalty-free for ALL users who can receive the distribution), the only logical conclusion to draw is that SCC aggreed at the moment of distribution to permit use of their patent within Linux as royalty-free to the public (which includes individuals, governments, deities, and businesses alike).
it's a fairly a->b->c sort of thing. The only thing assumed is that SCC had the conscious intent to comply with the GPL... If they never intended to comply with the GPL, then this whole point is moot and they are in violation of the license! This certainly isn't a rocket-science concept to understand.
So what are our outcomes? (1) SCC provides royalty-free use of their patent in SELinux, (2) SCC withdraws their code, (3) SCC tries to play hardball by requiring licensing while violating the GPL and tries to fight the GPL in court. The likelihood of 3 doesn't seem too likely.
Looks like the first person to start thinking in the right direction here! The new offer/counter-offer thing is just an extension, an expression, of the relationship between you (the employee) and the company (specifically, your manager).
When the relationship between manager and employee is good (manager is supportive, employee is ambitious, manager stands up for and respresents those he manages), raises rarely need to be requested. A good manager will already be pushing the higher-ups to give you a raise. If your manager-employee relationship is good, but no mention of a raise or fighting for one comes from your boss, then they probably feel you are not doing above-average work in your position.
If the relationship is not good (neutral or negative, doesn't matter) with your manager, you'll have to fight for a raise every single time. If you're comfortable with this environment, then stick with it... But if you would prefer working with more enthusiastic and supportive management that brings you the raise before you can ask for it (provided you deserve it!), then take the new job and see how you do with their management. Considering your existing malcontent, it's difficult for your situation to get worse.:)
My situation was similar recently. I had worked for a small tech company for nearly two years, in which time I had 0 vacation days, 0 raise, and did the job of 4 people. This was known, acknowledged, and they promised me both a raise and employees to work under me. After a year of them not fulfilling their promises (justified by constant changes in management - i went between 5 managers in under 2 years!), I moved jobs. The new position was slightly more money, but it offered me a predictable position with an established and very positive-focused management team. The enjoyment of working on this team is what makes it worthwhile... I actually take home less money due to benefits and all that... and no matter what my prior employer offered, there was no way I would have accepted a counter-offer- not because I don't like counter-offers, but because what I wanted was something they weren't capable of offering.
It's good to understand what it is you are really looking for when changing jobs...
Here's the quick and dirty as to why many of the slashdot community have a violent hatred toward spammers: We run mail servers.
I run vectorstar.net, a free hosting service. I would easily wager that greater than 90% of the mail that wriggles through to our users is spam. Thus, 90% of my mail-related disk space and 90% of my mail server processing goes to handling unwanted, unnecessary spam. That's the difference between being able to run a Pentium 100 server or a PIII-1ghz server. Thus, it costs me a LOT of money to deal with spam mail.
The same situation falls true for the majority of businesses. Their mail servers handle far more spam than they do valid email. It leads to serious expenditures on mail server hardware, (in some companies) software, and staff to maintain the servers.
I got the same puzzled look on my face when I read that... Microsoft is urging the Judge to completely ignore the separation of powers - a fundamental and critical tenet of our government - and skip the checks and balances so they can escape this trial.
In the case that the judge turns down this proposed settlement, she will have executed the basic principles of the United States' separation of powers. However, (pure speculation) Microsoft sounds like it wants to file suit against her for some twisted concept of constitutional rights infringement. This will go into at least a 6 month session to discuss the constitutional questions imposed, ending with another final decision which could sway in Microsoft's favor. Either way, they've delayed the inevitable even further into the future.
In the case that the judge accepts this proposed settlement, Microsoft will smile all the way back to Redmond, while the 9 states and competitor companies scream bloody murder and open suit against the judge for NOT following the basic principles of the separation of powers. Her professional career will likely get ruined, and she'll be removed from the judicial system at all levels. Microsoft would REALLY like this - if someone wants to bring this trial back for reconsideration again, they need to get a new judge, retrain them, and drag this on for ANOTHER 2 years. In the meantime, Microsoft gets to operate business under the ruling and settlement. By that time, Windows 2000 will be mostly wiped out from public use, let alone Windows 95. The trial will have absolutely no meaning by the time they really get back to the courtroom.
No matter which way things go, Microsoft's got the game plan going to never let this trial end.
Another thing which seems to be rarely mentioned is that Slackware tries to be both Linux- and BSD- compatible, to as reasonable a degree as possible. In fact, it was one of Slackware's founding principles ("create the most unix-like linux possible"). Another strong rationale for us Slackware fans is that it's trivial at best to debate differences between most BSDs and Slackware. Hell, even Slackware's install script is a look-alike of FreeBSD's.:)
Further down in this thread, someone mentioned the/usr/man versus/usr/share/man thing, etc etc.../usr/man is generally BSD-like, while/usr/share/man is Linux-like (linux filesystem standards dictate this). Also of important note is that in Slackware,/usr/share/man is a symlink to/usr/man. This leaves Slackware with a BSD feel while maintaining full Linux compatibility.
Everyone makes a big deal about compiling from source in Slackware, or "not having a package management system", but completely ovelook the reasons why slackware doesn't appear to focus on package management.
Slackware is as unix-like as possible. POSIX (correct me if i'm wrong) does not dictate any package management standards of any sort.
Slackware's (very under-used).tgz package manager is simple and works with VERY few problems. It's similar, though not straight-up compatible, with the BSD packages and ports... The package manager is very slackful itself, and allows you to compile lots of stuff yourself without unnecessarily bitching about dependencies. Sure, it can lead to non-uber-developers missing a dependent library when installing something big, but they can go back and add that library either by source or by package, and all is good.
Many RedHat-built packages (provided they're not built on GCC 2.96) work very well with Slackware, especially when converted to.tgz using rpm2tgz or any of its accompanying tools. These tools allow you to have the best of both worlds (fully packaged software and a super-lightweight, nearly transparent package manager).
Slackware's developers follow the line of thought that package management is not and never will be an end-all solution to software installation on a *nix operating system. Instead of trying to force package management down the throats of their users, they prefer to take a split approach, giving some fairly good package management capabilities (also THE easiest to learn out of any linux package manager - it's SO simple) without discouraging source-compilation of software.
forgive me if i've repeated myself a thousand times. i'm just ranting.:)
The utility of the 2.4 series kernel in production is completely dependent on what your server's functions are. For example, my employer has a specialised audio/video streaming daemon which suffered from (read: design problems) network subsystem performance problems in 2.2. These problems could be fixed with some kernel source modification and recompilation, but that degree of modification should not have been necessary (based on WHAT needed to be changed in the kernel). In 2.4, 90% of the things needing modification can now be set via/proc or sysctl. The other 10% were design limitations in the 2.2 series kernels which have been addressed and resolved (at least, to our application's satisfaction).
On the other hand, I'm still running 2.2 for our SQL server. After 2.4.16 and later have been tested by some other bleeding-edge people with database servers, I'll move it up. The VM problems and changes in the kernel seriously scared me away from making an early upgrade to 2.4.
I think you bring up possibly the most intriguing point of these lawsuits - How will the Judiciary react if given the option to opt-out of these lawsuits and the heavy hand of the RIAA? Will they give in and buckle to the big industry, or maintain their expected neutral poise and address the issues of civil liberties being threatened by the DMCA and its abuse?
In many ways I see the answers to these questions being more important to us in the long-run than the answers to the lawsuits themselves. If the Judiciary doesn't even give citizens a chance to defend their rights, all of our future battles will be over before they begin.
In game programming, you have a SIGNIFICANTLY higher percentage of algorithm-related problems (mathematical efficiency, adequate precision to make this texture map properly on this wireframe, etc), whereas in the business app world, most late-breaking problems are behavioral or logic problems that the end user/customer/project manager doesn't like. The two types of problems are drastically different to fix.
Algorithms for sound, video, timing, or object/model/sprite placement are often very isolated (this algo is only used in this scene to time the action between hero A's sword and monster B's head), and can be worked on without a thorough understanding of the rest of the program. Fresh blood can be brought in solely to fix the functions that sync 'facial' movement with voice. It's a LOT harder to do that sort of staffing-swap when it comes to a business app which doesn't have the (customer's) "right" behaviour when you shift-click-drag over a certain box of text while in print-preview mode only.:) Those sorts of behavioral problems are difficult to solve if you aren't entrenched in the design process of the business application.
It basically comes down to the classic left-brain, right-brain divide.:)
You're right - Slackware, Debian, and SuSE (relatively older players in the Linux game than RedHat) did do this heavily in older versions. However, there has been some work in each of these distributions to remedy this. For example, in Slackware 8, all GNOME default-install stuff is in/opt/gnome (which is sensible and clean), all KDE default-install stuff is in/opt/kde (likewise), and contrib packages normally get installed in/usr/local (the semi-official place for things you compile yourself) or/opt (more sensible, since these are still distro packages).
As far as commercial UNIXes go, they really *are* better organized than the average Linux distribution. I'm speaking mainly from Solaris experience, but BSD/OS and HP/UX also keep a pretty good level of modularity to the filesystem structure.
RedHat certainly didn't start this fiasco, but then again they haven't been very proactive in fixing these problems either. I can't speak for GNOME or KDE on RedHat (since I only use RedHat for servers without X), but the contrib packages practically all get thrown into/usr and make things a real nightmare to manage. Added atop that dependency conflicts where Program A needs library 2.3.4 while Program B needs library 2.4.5, and the system approaches unmanageable at a very high rate of speed.
A little more modularity in the file organization department wouldn't hurt us. It could also help the dependency problems if the package maintainers use a more modular file structure to their advantage.
Indeed, you make some excellent points, especially with the role of Universities in providing a service (and what exactly that service is).
Any student who has expressly entered into an agreement with the University which compensates them for their work (pays for tuition, housing, salary, whatever) would, in my mind, be an employee of the University and the rights to innovation would justly fall in the hands of the University. It's the student's decision to enter that sort of agreement with the University that is so important.
Lemon educations are a dime a dozen. Anyone can buy themselves a degree from the college of their choice with little effort and even less learning. The dot-com phase left the world with plenty of paper CIS-degree holders, MCSEs, and CCNAs (among others) who completely lack the education expected behind their degrees.
In the case of most University research, it is done by graduate students shooting for a Masters' or Doctorate degree. In this plateau of the educational system, the lemon educations are far less common. A student does receive an education from doing their research, but the research is not their payment for the education: their tuition is their payment.
Of course that cycles back to students explicitly choosing to enter a contract by which they trade their research rights for monetary compensation, be it tuition, free housing, or a salary. For those who accept no such compensation from the University, I am glad to see some protection of rights to research imposed by the government.
Production Laptop that meets most of those specs
on
Rolling Your Own Laptop?
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· Score: 3, Informative
You may want to consider the Compaq Armada 4000 line, particularly the 4220T.
It's like 5lbs, 266mhz Pentium MMX mobile, 12" screen (does 800x600), runs linux very well... grab one of those 2-slot-high 3com PCMCIA cards that lets you jack the ethernet straight into the card (no more dongle annoyance).
The stock battery will run you in X, editing files, for about 8 hours. Add a second battery, that time goes up to 18 hours, depending on use. These numbers are with a Toshiba 4gb IDE laptop drive. If you replaced that with a less power-hungry Flash device, I'm quite sure that a double-battery setup could run for 25-30 hours on this laptop.
I used to run one of these laptops as a car MP3 player, and it could normally go 15-18 hours without being recharged on two batteries. It also recharged to full in about 3 hours.
I've seen lots of discussion about what body deserves the credit, ownership, and rights to a patent. I am going to lay up a basic apples-to-apples comparison between University/Graduate research and Corporate research.
A company/corporation:
A corporation employs you and pays you a salary.
A corporation does not charge you tuition or fees for use of its facilities.
A corporation generally holds all rights to discoveries and inventions you make during your work with the company.
An University:
An University does not employ you or pay you a salary.
An University charges tuition, lab fees, and graduate fees to use its facilities and personnel.
An University generally holds all rights to discoveries or inventions you make during your research.
These two institutions are NOT balanced! I can completely understand and agree with a company which claims rights to a patentable invention you make during work hours and on work equipment. I can NOT understand how an University can even begin to claim rights, when the student is NOT employed by the university and PAYS to use their facilities! Any fruits of the student's labor are his- the University has already received their compensation - tuition!
I'm having a very difficult time understanding how an organization being fully compensated for use of their facilities can try to claim IP ownership on things created with their service. That's roughly equivalent to paying the Property Owner of an office building a commission, based off of your company's profits, above and beyond your rent!
It is also derived from a quote from Sigmund Freud:
Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities.
But it cannot achieve its end. Its doctrines carry with them the stamp of the times in which they originated, the ignorant childhood days of the human race.
Its consolations deserve no trust. Experience teaches us that the world is not a nursery.
The ethical commands, to which religion seeks to lend its weight, require some other foundations instead, for human society cannot do without them, and it is dangerous to link up obedience to them with religious belief.
If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man's evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity.
Simply speaking, I became a UNIX sysadmin by hobby. Screwing around with computers led to creating VectorStar Communications, which led to creating VectorStar Networks, a free hosting network. In parallel, my interest and enthusiasm got me moved fom NT administration to *NIX administration (FreeBSD mostly) with a company, then moving to another company where I am now, managing UNIX servers across the nation. Not bad for a college-dropout 21 year-old..:)
There is no such thing as 'the right thing to do' when it comes to the RIAA.
the "we claim to denounse the 'vigilante' actions of music piraters, but we are trying to become legally-protected vigilantes" hypocricy is, well, baffling. I don't think that any sane body of people could come up with anything as fundamentally and legally wrong. The RIAA just makes itself out to be a body of mentally-imbalanced sociopaths.
How far does the RIAA plan to take this? The mention of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is not only symbolically but literally relevant. Will the RIAA start burning books because we could translate the music into multiple sinusoidal equations and print it on paper? Are they going to get 'expert witnesses' to testify that the human brain never loses any data which it receives, and thus the human brain itself is a physical medium of piracy? Will they then lobotomize me to get their song back?
Of course this is an exaggeration... however, it is more possible today than it was yesterday.
actually, there's no negation there, just recursion... How bout this?
NCL: "NIL's a Consistent License" NIL: "NCL's an Inconsistent License"
This emulates the HURD acronym's style of definition (use codependent definitions to define nonsense).
I'm too tired to really test the logic of this BS, but it sounds logically fit for the circumstance (thus, false).:)
Microsoft's implementation of the Passport service is a conflict of interest. Microsoft sells the desktop Operating System, which will use HailStorm/.Net/Passport. They sell the Server Operating System, which will have proprietary plugs to integrate the Passport system with MS Transaction Server. They charge the customer for the ability to access the server. They charge the server people for access to their database. They also close out alternative online-transaction options.
Let's say you go to GiganticBookstore.com, and in order to buy book X (which you already have listed on your screen), you can either click the "Pay with Passport!" icon, or go through the 5-minute process of creating a user account, putting in your credit card info, your anti-spam-mail preferences, and then finally buy that one book. The convenience is going to lead a lot of online stores to eventually offer access only via Passport, to simplify management of the transaction server.
This convenience isn't simply a market need - it's being forced into the market by the (monopoly) marketholder, as a way to ensure that people will be forced to use their transaction-related products in the future. I see this behavior, regardless of if Passport is free to the end user, as incredibly dangerous and a complete conflict of interest.
MS is putting their hands in everyone's cookie jar at once. You know it won't be long until HailStorm also integrates a PayPal-clone and kills competition there... and then integrates an iBill-clone and puts THEM out of business too. And best of all, if you're not running IE 6.x on Windows XP with your "Automatic Update Notification" turned on, you won't be able to buy things from internet stores with your own real, legal money. Mozilla running on Linux? Why would Microsoft even begin to care about its market share when they control the transaction server OS, the online credit and banking interfaces, and the customer account info for something like 20% of the United States? Market share of a product they've successfully pushed out of the online transaction realm will be of no concern.
Your slackware problem is common - it's not a fault of slackware, but rather a problem with LILO options.
When Redhat or Mandrake are installed, they install LILO to the Master Boot Record (MBR) of the hard drive. A number of years ago, this was considered the 'good' and 'compatible' way of installing LILO. However, installing LILO to the Superblock of the active partition is now considered the best way to go. This is what Slackware does by default.
When this occurs, LILO does not remove the LILO installation to the MBR. When the system tries to boot, the MBR is read first for a bootstrap. That old instance of LILO attempts to run, fails to find its boot partition, and doesn't get past "LI". I run into this all the time when installing slackware on machines that come w/ RedHat. The easiest fix is to boot off of a Win98 bootdisk with FDISK.COM and run the command "FDISK/MBR". You will return to the command prompt without any messages. Go ahead and reboot from there.
The superblock's installation of LILO will run, and all will be good.:)
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I seemed to feel a tone of 'manifest destiny' in the article. Is it just me who believes that philosophy is completely irrelevant to Linux?
We don't NEED to gain market share. We don't NEED to singlehandedly supplant Windows in order to be successful. In fact, if Linux does supplant Windows, it's just going to become the next widely-hated major OS of the time, until someone else comes along and supplants Linux. Doesn't sound like fun to me.
What goals does the Linux community have, other than supplanting Windows? Hrm.... creating an autonymously stable and useful operating system. Showing the Windows world what it's like to build an OS that interoperates with the majority of standards out there. Tons of others.... Why do we feel this conquistador-like goal to take over the OS world? It seems bullish and idiotic to me. There are much better things we can accomplish, cooperatively, when we're not wasting our time trying to dominate. If we keep this up for too long, Linux really will be the next Windows, in all the worst ways.
I really can't find any place in my heart to take sides with the people yelling about having to pay for this service. I run a fairly well-sized free hosting service that offers some similar functionality, and I know personally how much work, time, and money out of my pocket goes into running this sort of system. I know that as my userbase grows above its measely 1500-user count it's at now, there's no way I'll be able to afford to continue the services I'm offering completely for free. Apple is in the same boat - They're obviously paying a number of people to run the iTools service, paying for hardware and bandwidth, and raking up a huge bill. Sure, the iTools system can be a great community-builder, but it can still be a great community-builder when their users are paying only about $8 a month for the services being offered.
To those of you who bitch about services being generously provided for free, get a clue. Better yet, how bout you try to set up a service of similar caliber and see how much it costs you to run 'for free'? You'd probably gain a little bit of respect for the amount of work that Apple has put into their system, for you.
ehhhh, sort of.... but that's too easy to detect.. even search engines pick it up! Random background images that are so dark that 90% of the users can't see them works a lot better, and is undetectable by search engines. Now if you did an image filter from a webcam to make it super-dark and had THAT as your background... THAT would be fun :) I just never felt motivated enough to write a piece to use libjpeg in such a way :)
Heh, my favorite was on black-background pages, having a random background image with an embossed super-dark-grey color... so only people in 16bit+ color COULD see it, if the brightness and contrast was high enough.. and once they did see it, it'd still be hard to discern. :)
:(
I remember putting a little easter egg into an undisclosed "mature webcam site" that would bring up the webcam of the NOC... I'm sure that nearly 3 years later it's gone, though... especially considering that the webcam of the NOC has changed IPs.
Geo Metro with a tune-up. Including the tune-up, it might cost you $250. :) Good mileage (45-55 mpg), but power is gonna suck. 55 horsepower.
Late-80's fuel-injected Honda Civic 5-speed with the A/C compressor belt removed... 35mpg city, 40-45 highway. Had one for many years. Absolutely loved it. It'll do 80mph very comfortably and top out about 100mph. Even when it was out of tune and needed work, I got 0.00% emissions across the board. Extremely clean-burning car. 95 horsepower.
Civic HX w/manual transmission... They've made the HX for like 8 years, so it's a VERY established car. Uses a variable 3- or 4- valve per cylinder combustion implementation (VTEC variant) in order to yield excellent combustion efficiency with near-zero unburnt gasoline. Since it still has the good ole' 4 valve per cylinder setup available for high-load situations, you can floor it and still get decent pickup and ~110mph top speed. 40mpg or more, unless you don't know how to drive. If you also unhook the belt to your A/C compressor, you will probably be able to hit 50mpg on highway. Their transmissions are so well-made that they're often fitted onto performance Civics, since they've got excellent gearing and are practically indestructable. This vehicle is still cheaper than the hybrids of all manufacturers by a few thousand bucks. about 110 horsepower, if I remember correctly.
A small-displacement motorcycle! Get a 250-400cc street bike that has some decent horsepower and is light-weight and you'll get 70mpg every day of the week. It'd also save you a TON of money, as you can easily pick up such bikes new for as low as $5000. Anywhere from 18 to 30 horsepower. 1/2 the hp of the metro with 1/6 of the weight... these are no slouches when it comes to acceleration. Top speed will range from 60mph to 80mph, depending on the bike's design.
http://www.obd-2.com/ is your answer. About $150 and you can interface with any of the 3 main OBD-II interfacing protocols. Downloadable updates. Error code sets for your manufacturer. Tons of information. And the author has a very impressive resume when it comes to automotive and computer diagnostic design!
:) Software has a hard time transforming into a torque wrench!
Mix this with a little bit of community-brainstorming on an automotive message board, and most car problems can be solved.Not having the tools to fix something is a whole other issue
Another place that's good to look is automotiveforums.com - the honda/acura crew (at least 50 regulars) are extremely active and very helpful :)
Yeah, it's a patent-law versus GPL thing, but (at least to me) it appears to be cut-and-dry. Linux existed, with its use of the (L)GPL as its license. SCC held their patent and chose to modify Linux to make use of their technology. They are a 'consumer' of Linux, and Linux is NOT a consumer of their technology. They are, before any consideration of patent law is considered, required to comply with the GPL in regards to adding anything to Linux.
So they (we assume consciously) chose to work their code into Linux and redistribute it. This action implies intent to comply with the GPL. Considering the specific requirements of the GPL in regards to patents (must be royalty-free for ALL users who can receive the distribution), the only logical conclusion to draw is that SCC aggreed at the moment of distribution to permit use of their patent within Linux as royalty-free to the public (which includes individuals, governments, deities, and businesses alike).
it's a fairly a->b->c sort of thing. The only thing assumed is that SCC had the conscious intent to comply with the GPL... If they never intended to comply with the GPL, then this whole point is moot and they are in violation of the license! This certainly isn't a rocket-science concept to understand.
So what are our outcomes? (1) SCC provides royalty-free use of their patent in SELinux, (2) SCC withdraws their code, (3) SCC tries to play hardball by requiring licensing while violating the GPL and tries to fight the GPL in court. The likelihood of 3 doesn't seem too likely.
Looks like the first person to start thinking in the right direction here! The new offer/counter-offer thing is just an extension, an expression, of the relationship between you (the employee) and the company (specifically, your manager).
:)
When the relationship between manager and employee is good (manager is supportive, employee is ambitious, manager stands up for and respresents those he manages), raises rarely need to be requested. A good manager will already be pushing the higher-ups to give you a raise. If your manager-employee relationship is good, but no mention of a raise or fighting for one comes from your boss, then they probably feel you are not doing above-average work in your position.
If the relationship is not good (neutral or negative, doesn't matter) with your manager, you'll have to fight for a raise every single time. If you're comfortable with this environment, then stick with it... But if you would prefer working with more enthusiastic and supportive management that brings you the raise before you can ask for it (provided you deserve it!), then take the new job and see how you do with their management. Considering your existing malcontent, it's difficult for your situation to get worse.
My situation was similar recently. I had worked for a small tech company for nearly two years, in which time I had 0 vacation days, 0 raise, and did the job of 4 people. This was known, acknowledged, and they promised me both a raise and employees to work under me. After a year of them not fulfilling their promises (justified by constant changes in management - i went between 5 managers in under 2 years!), I moved jobs. The new position was slightly more money, but it offered me a predictable position with an established and very positive-focused management team. The enjoyment of working on this team is what makes it worthwhile... I actually take home less money due to benefits and all that... and no matter what my prior employer offered, there was no way I would have accepted a counter-offer- not because I don't like counter-offers, but because what I wanted was something they weren't capable of offering.
It's good to understand what it is you are really looking for when changing jobs...
Here's the quick and dirty as to why many of the slashdot community have a violent hatred toward spammers: We run mail servers.
:)
I run vectorstar.net, a free hosting service. I would easily wager that greater than 90% of the mail that wriggles through to our users is spam. Thus, 90% of my mail-related disk space and 90% of my mail server processing goes to handling unwanted, unnecessary spam. That's the difference between being able to run a Pentium 100 server or a PIII-1ghz server. Thus, it costs me a LOT of money to deal with spam mail.
The same situation falls true for the majority of businesses. Their mail servers handle far more spam than they do valid email. It leads to serious expenditures on mail server hardware, (in some companies) software, and staff to maintain the servers.
So that's why we hate spam with a passion.
I got the same puzzled look on my face when I read that... Microsoft is urging the Judge to completely ignore the separation of powers - a fundamental and critical tenet of our government - and skip the checks and balances so they can escape this trial.
In the case that the judge turns down this proposed settlement, she will have executed the basic principles of the United States' separation of powers. However, (pure speculation) Microsoft sounds like it wants to file suit against her for some twisted concept of constitutional rights infringement. This will go into at least a 6 month session to discuss the constitutional questions imposed, ending with another final decision which could sway in Microsoft's favor. Either way, they've delayed the inevitable even further into the future.
In the case that the judge accepts this proposed settlement, Microsoft will smile all the way back to Redmond, while the 9 states and competitor companies scream bloody murder and open suit against the judge for NOT following the basic principles of the separation of powers. Her professional career will likely get ruined, and she'll be removed from the judicial system at all levels. Microsoft would REALLY like this - if someone wants to bring this trial back for reconsideration again, they need to get a new judge, retrain them, and drag this on for ANOTHER 2 years. In the meantime, Microsoft gets to operate business under the ruling and settlement. By that time, Windows 2000 will be mostly wiped out from public use, let alone Windows 95. The trial will have absolutely no meaning by the time they really get back to the courtroom.
No matter which way things go, Microsoft's got the game plan going to never let this trial end.
Further down in this thread, someone mentioned the
Everyone makes a big deal about compiling from source in Slackware, or "not having a package management system", but completely ovelook the reasons why slackware doesn't appear to focus on package management.
- Slackware is as unix-like as possible. POSIX (correct me if i'm wrong) does not dictate any package management standards of any sort.
- Slackware's (very under-used)
.tgz package manager is simple and works with VERY few problems. It's similar, though not straight-up compatible, with the BSD packages and ports... The package manager is very slackful itself, and allows you to compile lots of stuff yourself without unnecessarily bitching about dependencies. Sure, it can lead to non-uber-developers missing a dependent library when installing something big, but they can go back and add that library either by source or by package, and all is good.
- Many RedHat-built packages (provided they're not built on GCC 2.96) work very well with Slackware, especially when converted to
.tgz using rpm2tgz or any of its accompanying tools. These tools allow you to have the best of both worlds (fully packaged software and a super-lightweight, nearly transparent package manager).
Slackware's developers follow the line of thought that package management is not and never will be an end-all solution to software installation on a *nix operating system. Instead of trying to force package management down the throats of their users, they prefer to take a split approach, giving some fairly good package management capabilities (also THE easiest to learn out of any linux package manager - it's SO simple) without discouraging source-compilation of software.forgive me if i've repeated myself a thousand times. i'm just ranting.
The utility of the 2.4 series kernel in production is completely dependent on what your server's functions are. For example, my employer has a specialised audio/video streaming daemon which suffered from (read: design problems) network subsystem performance problems in 2.2. These problems could be fixed with some kernel source modification and recompilation, but that degree of modification should not have been necessary (based on WHAT needed to be changed in the kernel). In 2.4, 90% of the things needing modification can now be set via /proc or sysctl. The other 10% were design limitations in the 2.2 series kernels which have been addressed and resolved (at least, to our application's satisfaction).
On the other hand, I'm still running 2.2 for our SQL server. After 2.4.16 and later have been tested by some other bleeding-edge people with database servers, I'll move it up. The VM problems and changes in the kernel seriously scared me away from making an early upgrade to 2.4.
It's all relevant to application.
I think you bring up possibly the most intriguing point of these lawsuits - How will the Judiciary react if given the option to opt-out of these lawsuits and the heavy hand of the RIAA? Will they give in and buckle to the big industry, or maintain their expected neutral poise and address the issues of civil liberties being threatened by the DMCA and its abuse?
In many ways I see the answers to these questions being more important to us in the long-run than the answers to the lawsuits themselves. If the Judiciary doesn't even give citizens a chance to defend their rights, all of our future battles will be over before they begin.
In game programming, you have a SIGNIFICANTLY higher percentage of algorithm-related problems (mathematical efficiency, adequate precision to make this texture map properly on this wireframe, etc), whereas in the business app world, most late-breaking problems are behavioral or logic problems that the end user/customer/project manager doesn't like. The two types of problems are drastically different to fix.
:) Those sorts of behavioral problems are difficult to solve if you aren't entrenched in the design process of the business application.
:)
Algorithms for sound, video, timing, or object/model/sprite placement are often very isolated (this algo is only used in this scene to time the action between hero A's sword and monster B's head), and can be worked on without a thorough understanding of the rest of the program. Fresh blood can be brought in solely to fix the functions that sync 'facial' movement with voice. It's a LOT harder to do that sort of staffing-swap when it comes to a business app which doesn't have the (customer's) "right" behaviour when you shift-click-drag over a certain box of text while in print-preview mode only.
It basically comes down to the classic left-brain, right-brain divide.
You're right - Slackware, Debian, and SuSE (relatively older players in the Linux game than RedHat) did do this heavily in older versions. However, there has been some work in each of these distributions to remedy this. For example, in Slackware 8, all GNOME default-install stuff is in /opt/gnome (which is sensible and clean), all KDE default-install stuff is in /opt/kde (likewise), and contrib packages normally get installed in /usr/local (the semi-official place for things you compile yourself) or /opt (more sensible, since these are still distro packages).
/usr and make things a real nightmare to manage. Added atop that dependency conflicts where Program A needs library 2.3.4 while Program B needs library 2.4.5, and the system approaches unmanageable at a very high rate of speed.
As far as commercial UNIXes go, they really *are* better organized than the average Linux distribution. I'm speaking mainly from Solaris experience, but BSD/OS and HP/UX also keep a pretty good level of modularity to the filesystem structure.
RedHat certainly didn't start this fiasco, but then again they haven't been very proactive in fixing these problems either. I can't speak for GNOME or KDE on RedHat (since I only use RedHat for servers without X), but the contrib packages practically all get thrown into
A little more modularity in the file organization department wouldn't hurt us. It could also help the dependency problems if the package maintainers use a more modular file structure to their advantage.
Indeed, you make some excellent points, especially with the role of Universities in providing a service (and what exactly that service is).
Any student who has expressly entered into an agreement with the University which compensates them for their work (pays for tuition, housing, salary, whatever) would, in my mind, be an employee of the University and the rights to innovation would justly fall in the hands of the University. It's the student's decision to enter that sort of agreement with the University that is so important.
Lemon educations are a dime a dozen. Anyone can buy themselves a degree from the college of their choice with little effort and even less learning. The dot-com phase left the world with plenty of paper CIS-degree holders, MCSEs, and CCNAs (among others) who completely lack the education expected behind their degrees.
In the case of most University research, it is done by graduate students shooting for a Masters' or Doctorate degree. In this plateau of the educational system, the lemon educations are far less common. A student does receive an education from doing their research, but the research is not their payment for the education: their tuition is their payment.
Of course that cycles back to students explicitly choosing to enter a contract by which they trade their research rights for monetary compensation, be it tuition, free housing, or a salary. For those who accept no such compensation from the University, I am glad to see some protection of rights to research imposed by the government.
You may want to consider the Compaq Armada 4000 line, particularly the 4220T.
It's like 5lbs, 266mhz Pentium MMX mobile, 12" screen (does 800x600), runs linux very well... grab one of those 2-slot-high 3com PCMCIA cards that lets you jack the ethernet straight into the card (no more dongle annoyance). The stock battery will run you in X, editing files, for about 8 hours. Add a second battery, that time goes up to 18 hours, depending on use. These numbers are with a Toshiba 4gb IDE laptop drive. If you replaced that with a less power-hungry Flash device, I'm quite sure that a double-battery setup could run for 25-30 hours on this laptop.
I used to run one of these laptops as a car MP3 player, and it could normally go 15-18 hours without being recharged on two batteries. It also recharged to full in about 3 hours.
A company/corporation:
- A corporation employs you and pays you a salary.
- A corporation does not charge you tuition or fees for use of its facilities.
- A corporation generally holds all rights to discoveries and inventions you make during your work with the company.
An University:- An University does not employ you or pay you a salary.
- An University charges tuition, lab fees, and graduate fees to use its facilities and personnel.
- An University generally holds all rights to discoveries or inventions you make during your research.
These two institutions are NOT balanced! I can completely understand and agree with a company which claims rights to a patentable invention you make during work hours and on work equipment. I can NOT understand how an University can even begin to claim rights, when the student is NOT employed by the university and PAYS to use their facilities! Any fruits of the student's labor are his- the University has already received their compensation - tuition!I'm having a very difficult time understanding how an organization being fully compensated for use of their facilities can try to claim IP ownership on things created with their service. That's roughly equivalent to paying the Property Owner of an office building a commission, based off of your company's profits, above and beyond your rent!
Simply speaking, I became a UNIX sysadmin by hobby. Screwing around with computers led to creating VectorStar Communications, which led to creating VectorStar Networks, a free hosting network. In parallel, my interest and enthusiasm got me moved fom NT administration to *NIX administration (FreeBSD mostly) with a company, then moving to another company where I am now, managing UNIX servers across the nation. Not bad for a college-dropout 21 year-old.. :)
I actually wrote out the history of VectorStar recently, which covers this topic.
There is no such thing as 'the right thing to do' when it comes to the RIAA.
the "we claim to denounse the 'vigilante' actions of music piraters, but we are trying to become legally-protected vigilantes" hypocricy is, well, baffling. I don't think that any sane body of people could come up with anything as fundamentally and legally wrong. The RIAA just makes itself out to be a body of mentally-imbalanced sociopaths.
How far does the RIAA plan to take this? The mention of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is not only symbolically but literally relevant. Will the RIAA start burning books because we could translate the music into multiple sinusoidal equations and print it on paper? Are they going to get 'expert witnesses' to testify that the human brain never loses any data which it receives, and thus the human brain itself is a physical medium of piracy? Will they then lobotomize me to get their song back?
Of course this is an exaggeration... however, it is more possible today than it was yesterday.
actually, there's no negation there, just recursion... How bout this?
:)
NCL: "NIL's a Consistent License"
NIL: "NCL's an Inconsistent License"
This emulates the HURD acronym's style of definition (use codependent definitions to define nonsense). I'm too tired to really test the logic of this BS, but it sounds logically fit for the circumstance (thus, false).
Microsoft's implementation of the Passport service is a conflict of interest. Microsoft sells the desktop Operating System, which will use HailStorm/.Net/Passport. They sell the Server Operating System, which will have proprietary plugs to integrate the Passport system with MS Transaction Server. They charge the customer for the ability to access the server. They charge the server people for access to their database. They also close out alternative online-transaction options.
Let's say you go to GiganticBookstore.com, and in order to buy book X (which you already have listed on your screen), you can either click the "Pay with Passport!" icon, or go through the 5-minute process of creating a user account, putting in your credit card info, your anti-spam-mail preferences, and then finally buy that one book. The convenience is going to lead a lot of online stores to eventually offer access only via Passport, to simplify management of the transaction server.
This convenience isn't simply a market need - it's being forced into the market by the (monopoly) marketholder, as a way to ensure that people will be forced to use their transaction-related products in the future. I see this behavior, regardless of if Passport is free to the end user, as incredibly dangerous and a complete conflict of interest.
MS is putting their hands in everyone's cookie jar at once. You know it won't be long until HailStorm also integrates a PayPal-clone and kills competition there... and then integrates an iBill-clone and puts THEM out of business too. And best of all, if you're not running IE 6.x on Windows XP with your "Automatic Update Notification" turned on, you won't be able to buy things from internet stores with your own real, legal money. Mozilla running on Linux? Why would Microsoft even begin to care about its market share when they control the transaction server OS, the online credit and banking interfaces, and the customer account info for something like 20% of the United States? Market share of a product they've successfully pushed out of the online transaction realm will be of no concern.
Your slackware problem is common - it's not a fault of slackware, but rather a problem with LILO options.
/MBR". You will return to the command prompt without any messages. Go ahead and reboot from there.
The superblock's installation of LILO will run, and all will be good. :)
When Redhat or Mandrake are installed, they install LILO to the Master Boot Record (MBR) of the hard drive. A number of years ago, this was considered the 'good' and 'compatible' way of installing LILO. However, installing LILO to the Superblock of the active partition is now considered the best way to go. This is what Slackware does by default.
When this occurs, LILO does not remove the LILO installation to the MBR. When the system tries to boot, the MBR is read first for a bootstrap. That old instance of LILO attempts to run, fails to find its boot partition, and doesn't get past "LI". I run into this all the time when installing slackware on machines that come w/ RedHat. The easiest fix is to boot off of a Win98 bootdisk with FDISK.COM and run the command "FDISK