> They can jump from one candy handholding OS to > another without going through any kind of > knowledge gathering to do so.
My experience with this type of user (and there's lots of them) is that their Windows boxes generally "clog up with junk" running slower and slower and less and less reliably over time. Depending on the user, in my experience it can be anywhere from 6-12 months before the PC pretty much needs Windows to be reinstalled.
How many users can actually reinstall a Windows machine, plus all their apps, plus recover their data from backups ("what are they?") when that time comes? Judging from the Q&A sections in PC magazines, a lot of people can't manage this.
I think it's actually easier now to reinstall Linux than to reinstall Windows. Consider distros such as Mepis, Knoppix, Morphix - they've got all that most home users will ever need on 1 CD, and the install consists of booting off that CD and either typing one or two commands or clicking an "Install to hard disk" option and clicking "Next" a few times. It's a lot easier to do this than to install a typical Windows box with apps on multiple different CDs and tracking down serial numbers.
Now, if only these users (and here I'm talking about *you*, Mum, Dad and sis!) would remember to take backups from time to time...
That summary could be applied to just about any Linux distribution, not just Xandros and Lindows.
Interesting how in the "normal office" uses (i.e. OpenOffice, Net access and Web browsing) Linux is now seen as at least good enough.
From the article, I suspect the author is comparing installation of Win XP *without other apps* against installing Lindows/Xandros *with multiple bundled apps* - this would mean that Lindows/Xandros installs are actually even better than stated given that nobody installs Win XP without also installing other apps afterwards.
Personally, I've found that installing a "home" Windows PC takes about a day, by the time I install Windows, install service packs, critical patches, MS Office (including finding serial numbers) and sundry apps. With Knoppix or Mepis, it takes me about an hour to get to the same point (i.e install OS to disc, install netselect, find fastest host, apt-get update, apt-get upgrade). Furthermore, installing the Windows PC requires me to actually be sitting in front of the PC doing stuff for a sizeable amount of the time, whereas with the Linux distros I spend very little time actually in front of the PC itself.
> However, the technology would obviously require > the makers of file swapping software to add it > into their products either voluntarily or through > legislation.
I'd like every financial transaction in the world to result in $1 being added into my bank account. All I need to do is convince financial institutions to add that functionality into their products, either voluntarily or through legislation.
Has it somehow escaped the attention of these people that P2P applications aren't able to be regulated by legislation? If that were the case, why not just go all out and introduce legislation worldwide to have people killed off if they swap music or video files.
As far as voluntary inclusion of this feature is concerned: if one P2P app implements this checking, another will be produced somewhere in the world without it and people will use that instead. It's a Darwinian process; no matter how good a P2P app is in other ways, if it includes this feature people will drop it cold. The P2P applications that are commonly used for file swapping are now mature and interchangeable to the point that there is no reason to stick with one that has a feature you don't like.
Hopefully some clever kid got his research grant approved for coming up with this idea though
> We customise all user desktops (we use Linux as a > terminal server) so that only 5-10 icons are > present and those are the only apps the users can > access. Easy to use, no confusion.
This is, in a nutshell, why Linux desktops are now *better* than Windows in a large corporate environment. Big corps don't want their users to be running every application in existence; they want them to be able to run only those ones that they should be running.
For most large companies, the vast majority of users need to run the following apps: - email client - Web browser - spreadsheet - word processor - some sort of presentation package
That's it - that meets the requirements of the majority of office workers. In fact, many would only need to use email+browser; not that many people actually create content.
I'm aware you can do this sort of customisation and establish a Terminal Server in Windows; I've done it myself several times. However, it's much MUCH easier to do it with Linux, plus you're not worrying about licence management/violations with MS Office apps.
You don't need to run massively planning exercises to roll out the next version of Office or Windows; on a Linux Terminal Server platform, you can run small pilots with a few users then flip out the upgrades (to e.g. OpenOffice, Mozilla, etc) to all your users with much less effort.
As the parent points out, the time between required hardware upgrades to desktop systems is typically a couple of years longer with Linux than with Windows. You have to upgrade your "central server" system on about the same schedule regardless of whether it's running Windows or Linux, but desktop systems have rollouts only every e.g. 3-4 years rather than every e.g 2.
> Call open source the software of choice among > terrorists. If it takes hold and any terrorists > there get caught with it on their machines look > for microsoft and the government to start pointing > fingers.
You're not the first to say this, but it's one of the most idiotic arguments I've ever heard. I can't believe either Bush or Microsoft would push this line.
Have any terrorists been caught with Windows on their PCs? Are the latest breed of "computer terrorists" (aka virus writers) running Windows on their PCs? If the answers are "Yes" and "Yes", don't you think you could construct a counter argument that Windows is actually the terrorists' choice?
One of the first things the media would do with such an issue is to consult "respected FOSS spokesman (insert any of several names here)". Do you think Microsoft would risk that person pointing the finger of blame back at MS based on the above argument?
Equating FOSS with terrorism is both absurd and unrealistic.
IMHO, shorting SCOX is a lot riskier than buying options on SCO Linux licences.
I figure SCOX has a few more upward blips left in it, courtesy of upcoming news announcements from SCO such as "We've initiated procedings against NASA for future unannounced and unauthorised usage of Linux on Mars missions. We've fixed NASAs *global* Linux licence fee at $20m, which is a bargain in anyone's language...". All it will take is one genius investment advisor to accept that at face value, and BOOM up goes the SCOX price.
SCO Linux licences, as others have pointed out, will be worth more than gold when RICO law enforcement appears to beat up Darl Inc. They're both a much safer and potentially much more lucrative investment than shorting SCOX.
> If it turns out that they lose the suit but get > the license fees from everyone anyways, this could > open them up to RICO Act suits (triple damages, > court costs included).
From where I'm sitting, that looks like a pretty good investment.
Anyone know if I can buy options on SCO licences? I don't want to buy them now, but I'm happy to invest some loot now to ensure I get the option to buy them at some later date. Now, where's my court calendar...?
From the look of the outfit you'd have to wear, I suspect a female figure is pretty much mandatory....So I guess it boils down to "How far are you prepared to go to be a test pilot? Are you prepared to take one (or, more accurately, lose two) for the sake of the team?"
You don't have to be a non-English speaker to write code like that.
Many years ago, I inherited control of a R&D team. A year or so earlier, they'd hired a contractor for a couple of months; this contractor had created a ~1000 line Perl module that had acquired "sacred code" status since he'd left.
Any attempt to alter, extend or tweak the sacred code in any way resulted in it failing. It was totally bereft of comments, frequently had multiple commands within a single line of code, lots of "magic" regular expressions, and variable names that didn't make sense to any of us. Most variables had global scope, variables were frequently reused for no apparent reason and it didn't even have blank lines between functions.
I know Perl is frequently a write-only language, but this was something else. I can't believe a human could actually produce code like this on purpose; he must have used some sort of Perl obfuscator.
Everyone in my team was terrified of the sacred code, as they knew working on it was doomed to failure.
One of the most enjoyable times I had on that job was when the guy who created the code came back and asked for more work...
Re:Online P2P pirates prolly not big movie problem
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FBI Anti-Piracy Seal
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· Score: 1
> It usually doesn't take all that much money to > *make* a good movie (I have nice memories of Monty > Python). It's just hard to do so predictably.
While I agree with you, that's no excuse. These people are *in the movie business* - either they should get a success rate > 40% by e.g. slashing costs everywhere including salaries, or get out of the business.
The real truth, as others have said, is that their true profit model is hidden by the way they choose to announce their figures.
> "We absolutely need downstream revenue to > survive," said Ken Jacobsen, senior VP and > director of worldwide anti-piracy operations for > the MPAA, noting that only four of 10 movies earn > enough at the box office to recoup the average of > $89 million spent on producing and marketing a > film.
I think the MPAA should be looking at two other issues in addition to piracy: - why do only 40% of movies actually make money? I find it hard to believe that wholesale copyright infringement is ripping that much off the bottom line; very few people actually have the bandwidth to download movies, and not all of those have DVD burners - why does the average file cost $89m to make and market? I can remember only about 10 years ago that $100m was considered an obscene amount to spend on making a film (refer to "Waterworld" and "Last Action Hero" as examples); now it's only slightly above average?
I think these guys have got to have a bit of a reality check if they're spending $89m per film and complaining about not recovering costs. *Someone* has had a very big salary hike...
> But is it practically feasible at this stage to > switch to such a system?
I think, at this point, it is.
There's hardly an ISP on Earth who wouldn't be paying out big dollars because of spam. Either they're ignoring spam completely, paying big bucks in storage and data transmission costs and pissing off their customers in the process of not filtering spam, OR they're employing guys to write constantly changing rules for e.g. SpamAssassin while *still* paying big money for storage and data transmission.
Obviously there's going to be an enormous expense in replacing SMTP with something else. However, by and large it's an ISP-to-ISP issue; end users (probably) won't need to update their email software if the correct solution is deployed.
What it boils down to is a need for every ISP *worldwide*, and everyone who operates a mail server, to bring their systems down for e.g. 1 hour at the exact same time, install a replacement SMTP protocol, then bring it back up again. It's a one-off expense (with admittedly a lot of logistic challenges) for each ISP that could/should fix the spam problem once and for all.
Now, I'm aware that some businesses can't accept that they'll be without email services for an hour, but those same businesses are suffering from loss of email services *because* of massive email-driven DoS attacks on a semi-regular basis already. If taking this one outage would remove 60-90% of the total email that a system had to process (note: that seems to be a generally accepted figure for the percentage of spam to non-spam messages), then a whole lot of other issues would become much easier to deal with; ISPs storage and traffic costs would reduce by a large amount and those savings could be re-routed to fix other issues.
I say "Do it, and do it sooner rather than later."
Seems like Rexx is dying out
on
Rexx for Everyone
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· Score: 3, Interesting
My perception is that, these days, many people who use scripting languages tend to know two or three. One is generally bash/Perl/VBScript, and the other is a (for want of another term) "more modern" scripting language such as Python or Ruby.
bash and Perl are ideal for ripping together short scripts that do relatively simple things. The problem you often encounter with these languages is that it's hard to maintain scripts of more than a few hundred lines unless you're very disciplined in how you structure your code. VBScript on Windows sits in this area as well.
Python and Ruby fill the >100 line script niche by adding nice OO features. Python and Ruby scripts are generally easier to support than bash/Perl scripts once you get beyond a few hundred lines of code.
TCL seems to sit somewhere in the middle. I've never met anyone who actually uses it regularly, so I'm not really competent to slot it in anywhere...
Where does Rexx fit? Frankly, these days, it doesn't - these tools pretty much have the market cornered on both Windows and Unix platforms. New tools will emerge to split the "market" further, but to do that they'll offer some compelling extra feature to get people to switch. Rexx, being an existing solution, isn't likely to offer that compelling new feature.
The question Rexx advocates need to address is "Why would someone *switch* to my language?". In order to answer that, they need to be able to reasonably objectively discuss the pros and cons of Rexx vs. Perl/Python/bash/..., and I don't know of many Rexx people who can do that; they tend to know Rexx and nothing else in the scripting space.
I don't think it will be Google because they've got the resources to counter-sue.
I think it'll be some 13yo kid somewhere in the US; someone who definitely won't have the resources or sense of outrage to take on SCO legally, but who will generate public sympathy to the point where his "SCO tax" will be paid by someone else.
It'll get lots of news coverage, and it'll be a very "clean" operation in terms of scaring a few relevant people and not financially damaging the kid in question; he'll get paid by the news stations and magazines for his story and he'll do OK out of it.
It'll also happen in a blaze of publicity, as Darl has to push up that share price if he's gonna qualify for his bonus payment.
> What recourse do I have if I'm designing something > that looks enough like currency to trigger it, but > actually has a legitimate purpose (e.g. a prop for > a film)?
As a Linux-knowledgeable Slashdot reader, you say "Don't sweat it, Mr Spielberg. I've got my buddy The Gimp who can help us..."
you want to test scalability. Try hitting it with lots of different "virtual users" simultaneously, and have a few do uploads/downloads of big files if that's functionality you're going to offer.
You'd be surprised how badly some of these solutions scale from a performance perspective. CPU utilisation is the usual culprit, and many of the "off the shelf" solutions don't offer lots of CPU scalability options.
Absolutely agree. If you've ever photocopied a US bank note, you'll see that even crappy techology like an office photocopier produces something that (aside from being the wrong colour) is pretty close to the original.
Instead of getting software manufacturers to alter their products, why not just solve the real problem and make US bank notes more difficult to copy?
Has anyone tried scanning/copying either non-US currency or "currency like" stuff (e.g. Monopoly money) to see if the anti-copying technology kicks in?
Agreed. I know 2 MS consulting guys who got Tablet PCs about 30 seconds after they were released, and now they're both back on normal laptops.
If these guys, who are both gung-ho MS shills, can't make Tablet PCs work in the way they want, then there's no way I'd consider buying one. These guys both have access to all the pre-release internal MS software, so they aren't even satisfied with Tablets using software that's 1/2 - 1 generation ahead of what us mere mortals are using.
You're right - a LiveCD really is in another class.
However, I think LiveCDs are going to bring Linux to a new generation of users that would never have considered Linux before. Consider these: - Knoppix et al don't *need* to be configured; you put in the CD, turn it on and you get the pretty desktop. Of course, you'll want to configure in printers etc. in many instances, but the immediate experience is of something that is useable - all your software is there, ready to go. No multi-hour installs of different applications - if you don't want the "kitchen sink" array of tools that comes with Knoppix, just burn a Mepis CD instead. Or a MandrakeMove,...
Linux in general doesn't offer this, and nor does Windows. It's extremely appealing, particularly for someone who may have had no end of problems keeping Windows going lately...
The final plus is that, now you've found this really cool Linux tool, you're actually encouraged to copy it and give it to all your friends. If/when MS continues to tighten up on their anti-piracy measures, this will become even more significant.
People who I suspect don't know what Linux is, are now starting to talk to me about this cool "whole computer thing on a CD". When you ask a few questions, it turns out it's Knoppix they're talking about.
I've got no idea if they're ever going to actually switch to Knoppix, but it has a coolness about it that's pretty impressive to a whole lot of people. That's what getting distributed in magazines will do for you. In fact, reading those magazines the month after they bundle a Linux distro, there's always a bunch of reader's letters talking about how great "this Linux thing" is after all.
Re:I bet not many people will want to...
on
Space Burial
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· Score: 3, Funny
No, but Uranus would burn if there were people in it
Am I the only one...
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Space Burial
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· Score: 2, Insightful
...wondering how a person can be *buried* in *space*?
Do mourners get to sprinkle a bit of space on the "grave"?
I think the parent post, and the grandparent, make a very good point.
I'm one of those people who has neither the time or patience to play 99% of computer games. However, I'm occasionally happy to load up a demo version of a game, play it for 20 minutes, then remove it and never think about it again. If it gets my brain working in some different direction, it actually makes me more productive when I get back to work again.
There is absolutely no way I'll shell out cash for computer games any more - the demo versions actually exceed my attention span, and these demo versions are on the cover of nearly every computer mag out there. Spend $5-10, and I get a magazine with enough demo games to keep me interested till the next issue comes out...
The point here is I'm quite certain that there's people out there who have slightly more time and inclination than I do; they'll pirate a game, play it for (say) a few hours to a week, then delete it and never even think of it again. Either they must consider the game is not worthy of further attention, or they don't actually have the time or inclination to get beyond e.g. level 5; why then is the game creator trying to sell that game with 503 levels knowing that it'll take most people 2 years to complete?
With a few exceptions, I suspect that only a tiny percentage of gamers actually see out the end of most games; most lose interest and try the latest hot game when it comes out. It seems akin to staging a basketball game where everyone leaves at 1/2 time; if that happened, you'd have to think it was a flawed product or delivery model to begin with.
Slashdot Mirror
> They can jump from one candy handholding OS to
> another without going through any kind of
> knowledge gathering to do so.
My experience with this type of user (and there's lots of them) is that their Windows boxes generally "clog up with junk" running slower and slower and less and less reliably over time. Depending on the user, in my experience it can be anywhere from 6-12 months before the PC pretty much needs Windows to be reinstalled.
How many users can actually reinstall a Windows machine, plus all their apps, plus recover their data from backups ("what are they?") when that time comes? Judging from the Q&A sections in PC magazines, a lot of people can't manage this.
I think it's actually easier now to reinstall Linux than to reinstall Windows. Consider distros such as Mepis, Knoppix, Morphix - they've got all that most home users will ever need on 1 CD, and the install consists of booting off that CD and either typing one or two commands or clicking an "Install to hard disk" option and clicking "Next" a few times. It's a lot easier to do this than to install a typical Windows box with apps on multiple different CDs and tracking down serial numbers.
Now, if only these users (and here I'm talking about *you*, Mum, Dad and sis!) would remember to take backups from time to time...
That summary could be applied to just about any Linux distribution, not just Xandros and Lindows.
Interesting how in the "normal office" uses (i.e. OpenOffice, Net access and Web browsing) Linux is now seen as at least good enough.
From the article, I suspect the author is comparing installation of Win XP *without other apps* against installing Lindows/Xandros *with multiple bundled apps* - this would mean that Lindows/Xandros installs are actually even better than stated given that nobody installs Win XP without also installing other apps afterwards.
Personally, I've found that installing a "home" Windows PC takes about a day, by the time I install Windows, install service packs, critical patches, MS Office (including finding serial numbers) and sundry apps. With Knoppix or Mepis, it takes me about an hour to get to the same point (i.e install OS to disc, install netselect, find fastest host, apt-get update, apt-get upgrade). Furthermore, installing the Windows PC requires me to actually be sitting in front of the PC doing stuff for a sizeable amount of the time, whereas with the Linux distros I spend very little time actually in front of the PC itself.
> However, the technology would obviously require
> the makers of file swapping software to add it
> into their products either voluntarily or through
> legislation.
I'd like every financial transaction in the world to result in $1 being added into my bank account. All I need to do is convince financial institutions to add that functionality into their products, either voluntarily or through legislation.
Has it somehow escaped the attention of these people that P2P applications aren't able to be regulated by legislation? If that were the case, why not just go all out and introduce legislation worldwide to have people killed off if they swap music or video files.
As far as voluntary inclusion of this feature is concerned: if one P2P app implements this checking, another will be produced somewhere in the world without it and people will use that instead. It's a Darwinian process; no matter how good a P2P app is in other ways, if it includes this feature people will drop it cold. The P2P applications that are commonly used for file swapping are now mature and interchangeable to the point that there is no reason to stick with one that has a feature you don't like.
Hopefully some clever kid got his research grant approved for coming up with this idea though
> We customise all user desktops (we use Linux as a
> terminal server) so that only 5-10 icons are
> present and those are the only apps the users can
> access. Easy to use, no confusion.
This is, in a nutshell, why Linux desktops are now *better* than Windows in a large corporate environment. Big corps don't want their users to be running every application in existence; they want them to be able to run only those ones that they should be running.
For most large companies, the vast majority of users need to run the following apps:
- email client
- Web browser
- spreadsheet
- word processor
- some sort of presentation package
That's it - that meets the requirements of the majority of office workers. In fact, many would only need to use email+browser; not that many people actually create content.
I'm aware you can do this sort of customisation and establish a Terminal Server in Windows; I've done it myself several times. However, it's much MUCH easier to do it with Linux, plus you're not worrying about licence management/violations with MS Office apps.
You don't need to run massively planning exercises to roll out the next version of Office or Windows; on a Linux Terminal Server platform, you can run small pilots with a few users then flip out the upgrades (to e.g. OpenOffice, Mozilla, etc) to all your users with much less effort.
As the parent points out, the time between required hardware upgrades to desktop systems is typically a couple of years longer with Linux than with Windows. You have to upgrade your "central server" system on about the same schedule regardless of whether it's running Windows or Linux, but desktop systems have rollouts only every e.g. 3-4 years rather than every e.g 2.
> Call open source the software of choice among
> terrorists. If it takes hold and any terrorists
> there get caught with it on their machines look
> for microsoft and the government to start pointing
> fingers.
You're not the first to say this, but it's one of the most idiotic arguments I've ever heard. I can't believe either Bush or Microsoft would push this line.
Have any terrorists been caught with Windows on their PCs? Are the latest breed of "computer terrorists" (aka virus writers) running Windows on their PCs? If the answers are "Yes" and "Yes", don't you think you could construct a counter argument that Windows is actually the terrorists' choice?
One of the first things the media would do with such an issue is to consult "respected FOSS spokesman (insert any of several names here)". Do you think Microsoft would risk that person pointing the finger of blame back at MS based on the above argument?
Equating FOSS with terrorism is both absurd and unrealistic.
IMHO, shorting SCOX is a lot riskier than buying options on SCO Linux licences.
I figure SCOX has a few more upward blips left in it, courtesy of upcoming news announcements from SCO such as "We've initiated procedings against NASA for future unannounced and unauthorised usage of Linux on Mars missions. We've fixed NASAs *global* Linux licence fee at $20m, which is a bargain in anyone's language...". All it will take is one genius investment advisor to accept that at face value, and BOOM up goes the SCOX price.
SCO Linux licences, as others have pointed out, will be worth more than gold when RICO law enforcement appears to beat up Darl Inc. They're both a much safer and potentially much more lucrative investment than shorting SCOX.
> If it turns out that they lose the suit but get
> the license fees from everyone anyways, this could
> open them up to RICO Act suits (triple damages,
> court costs included).
From where I'm sitting, that looks like a pretty good investment.
Anyone know if I can buy options on SCO licences? I don't want to buy them now, but I'm happy to invest some loot now to ensure I get the option to buy them at some later date. Now, where's my court calendar...?
From the look of the outfit you'd have to wear, I suspect a female figure is pretty much mandatory. ...So I guess it boils down to "How far are you prepared to go to be a test pilot? Are you prepared to take one (or, more accurately, lose two) for the sake of the team?"
Hmm?
You don't have to be a non-English speaker to write code like that.
Many years ago, I inherited control of a R&D team. A year or so earlier, they'd hired a contractor for a couple of months; this contractor had created a ~1000 line Perl module that had acquired "sacred code" status since he'd left.
Any attempt to alter, extend or tweak the sacred code in any way resulted in it failing. It was totally bereft of comments, frequently had multiple commands within a single line of code, lots of "magic" regular expressions, and variable names that didn't make sense to any of us. Most variables had global scope, variables were frequently reused for no apparent reason and it didn't even have blank lines between functions.
I know Perl is frequently a write-only language, but this was something else. I can't believe a human could actually produce code like this on purpose; he must have used some sort of Perl obfuscator.
Everyone in my team was terrified of the sacred code, as they knew working on it was doomed to failure.
One of the most enjoyable times I had on that job was when the guy who created the code came back and asked for more work...
> It usually doesn't take all that much money to
> *make* a good movie (I have nice memories of Monty
> Python). It's just hard to do so predictably.
While I agree with you, that's no excuse. These people are *in the movie business* - either they should get a success rate > 40% by e.g. slashing costs everywhere including salaries, or get out of the business.
The real truth, as others have said, is that their true profit model is hidden by the way they choose to announce their figures.
> "We absolutely need downstream revenue to
> survive," said Ken Jacobsen, senior VP and
> director of worldwide anti-piracy operations for
> the MPAA, noting that only four of 10 movies earn
> enough at the box office to recoup the average of
> $89 million spent on producing and marketing a
> film.
I think the MPAA should be looking at two other issues in addition to piracy:
- why do only 40% of movies actually make money? I find it hard to believe that wholesale copyright infringement is ripping that much off the bottom line; very few people actually have the bandwidth to download movies, and not all of those have DVD burners
- why does the average file cost $89m to make and market? I can remember only about 10 years ago that $100m was considered an obscene amount to spend on making a film (refer to "Waterworld" and "Last Action Hero" as examples); now it's only slightly above average?
I think these guys have got to have a bit of a reality check if they're spending $89m per film and complaining about not recovering costs. *Someone* has had a very big salary hike...
I've been taught that copyright infringement is really piracy, so these guys are pirates!
AAAAAARRRGH! Ye knows whats we does with pirates, don't ye? We keelhauls them, we do, matey!
More seriously, I'm dying to hear of one, just *one*, case of GPL infringement by a RIAA member organisation. Oh, the fun we'll have...
> But is it practically feasible at this stage to
> switch to such a system?
I think, at this point, it is.
There's hardly an ISP on Earth who wouldn't be paying out big dollars because of spam. Either they're ignoring spam completely, paying big bucks in storage and data transmission costs and pissing off their customers in the process of not filtering spam, OR they're employing guys to write constantly changing rules for e.g. SpamAssassin while *still* paying big money for storage and data transmission.
Obviously there's going to be an enormous expense in replacing SMTP with something else. However, by and large it's an ISP-to-ISP issue; end users (probably) won't need to update their email software if the correct solution is deployed.
What it boils down to is a need for every ISP *worldwide*, and everyone who operates a mail server, to bring their systems down for e.g. 1 hour at the exact same time, install a replacement SMTP protocol, then bring it back up again. It's a one-off expense (with admittedly a lot of logistic challenges) for each ISP that could/should fix the spam problem once and for all.
Now, I'm aware that some businesses can't accept that they'll be without email services for an hour, but those same businesses are suffering from loss of email services *because* of massive email-driven DoS attacks on a semi-regular basis already. If taking this one outage would remove 60-90% of the total email that a system had to process (note: that seems to be a generally accepted figure for the percentage of spam to non-spam messages), then a whole lot of other issues would become much easier to deal with; ISPs storage and traffic costs would reduce by a large amount and those savings could be re-routed to fix other issues.
I say "Do it, and do it sooner rather than later."
you've written two autobiographies
My perception is that, these days, many people who use scripting languages tend to know two or three. One is generally bash/Perl/VBScript, and the other is a (for want of another term) "more modern" scripting language such as Python or Ruby.
bash and Perl are ideal for ripping together short scripts that do relatively simple things. The problem you often encounter with these languages is that it's hard to maintain scripts of more than a few hundred lines unless you're very disciplined in how you structure your code. VBScript on Windows sits in this area as well.
Python and Ruby fill the >100 line script niche by adding nice OO features. Python and Ruby scripts are generally easier to support than bash/Perl scripts once you get beyond a few hundred lines of code.
TCL seems to sit somewhere in the middle. I've never met anyone who actually uses it regularly, so I'm not really competent to slot it in anywhere...
Where does Rexx fit? Frankly, these days, it doesn't - these tools pretty much have the market cornered on both Windows and Unix platforms. New tools will emerge to split the "market" further, but to do that they'll offer some compelling extra feature to get people to switch. Rexx, being an existing solution, isn't likely to offer that compelling new feature.
The question Rexx advocates need to address is "Why would someone *switch* to my language?". In order to answer that, they need to be able to reasonably objectively discuss the pros and cons of Rexx vs. Perl/Python/bash/..., and I don't know of many Rexx people who can do that; they tend to know Rexx and nothing else in the scripting space.
I don't think it will be Google because they've got the resources to counter-sue.
I think it'll be some 13yo kid somewhere in the US; someone who definitely won't have the resources or sense of outrage to take on SCO legally, but who will generate public sympathy to the point where his "SCO tax" will be paid by someone else.
It'll get lots of news coverage, and it'll be a very "clean" operation in terms of scaring a few relevant people and not financially damaging the kid in question; he'll get paid by the news stations and magazines for his story and he'll do OK out of it.
It'll also happen in a blaze of publicity, as Darl has to push up that share price if he's gonna qualify for his bonus payment.
> What recourse do I have if I'm designing something
> that looks enough like currency to trigger it, but
> actually has a legitimate purpose (e.g. a prop for
> a film)?
As a Linux-knowledgeable Slashdot reader, you say "Don't sweat it, Mr Spielberg. I've got my buddy The Gimp who can help us..."
you want to test scalability. Try hitting it with lots of different "virtual users" simultaneously, and have a few do uploads/downloads of big files if that's functionality you're going to offer.
You'd be surprised how badly some of these solutions scale from a performance perspective. CPU utilisation is the usual culprit, and many of the "off the shelf" solutions don't offer lots of CPU scalability options.
Absolutely agree. If you've ever photocopied a US bank note, you'll see that even crappy techology like an office photocopier produces something that (aside from being the wrong colour) is pretty close to the original.
Instead of getting software manufacturers to alter their products, why not just solve the real problem and make US bank notes more difficult to copy?
Has anyone tried scanning/copying either non-US currency or "currency like" stuff (e.g. Monopoly money) to see if the anti-copying technology kicks in?
Agreed. I know 2 MS consulting guys who got Tablet PCs about 30 seconds after they were released, and now they're both back on normal laptops.
If these guys, who are both gung-ho MS shills, can't make Tablet PCs work in the way they want, then there's no way I'd consider buying one. These guys both have access to all the pre-release internal MS software, so they aren't even satisfied with Tablets using software that's 1/2 - 1 generation ahead of what us mere mortals are using.
You're right - a LiveCD really is in another class.
...
However, I think LiveCDs are going to bring Linux to a new generation of users that would never have considered Linux before. Consider these:
- Knoppix et al don't *need* to be configured; you put in the CD, turn it on and you get the pretty desktop. Of course, you'll want to configure in printers etc. in many instances, but the immediate experience is of something that is useable
- all your software is there, ready to go. No multi-hour installs of different applications
- if you don't want the "kitchen sink" array of tools that comes with Knoppix, just burn a Mepis CD instead. Or a MandrakeMove,
Linux in general doesn't offer this, and nor does Windows. It's extremely appealing, particularly for someone who may have had no end of problems keeping Windows going lately...
The final plus is that, now you've found this really cool Linux tool, you're actually encouraged to copy it and give it to all your friends. If/when MS continues to tighten up on their anti-piracy measures, this will become even more significant.
People who I suspect don't know what Linux is, are now starting to talk to me about this cool "whole computer thing on a CD". When you ask a few questions, it turns out it's Knoppix they're talking about.
I've got no idea if they're ever going to actually switch to Knoppix, but it has a coolness about it that's pretty impressive to a whole lot of people. That's what getting distributed in magazines will do for you. In fact, reading those magazines the month after they bundle a Linux distro, there's always a bunch of reader's letters talking about how great "this Linux thing" is after all.
No, but Uranus would burn if there were people in it
...wondering how a person can be *buried* in *space*?
Do mourners get to sprinkle a bit of space on the "grave"?
I think the parent post, and the grandparent, make a very good point.
I'm one of those people who has neither the time or patience to play 99% of computer games. However, I'm occasionally happy to load up a demo version of a game, play it for 20 minutes, then remove it and never think about it again. If it gets my brain working in some different direction, it actually makes me more productive when I get back to work again.
There is absolutely no way I'll shell out cash for computer games any more - the demo versions actually exceed my attention span, and these demo versions are on the cover of nearly every computer mag out there. Spend $5-10, and I get a magazine with enough demo games to keep me interested till the next issue comes out...
The point here is I'm quite certain that there's people out there who have slightly more time and inclination than I do; they'll pirate a game, play it for (say) a few hours to a week, then delete it and never even think of it again. Either they must consider the game is not worthy of further attention, or they don't actually have the time or inclination to get beyond e.g. level 5; why then is the game creator trying to sell that game with 503 levels knowing that it'll take most people 2 years to complete?
With a few exceptions, I suspect that only a tiny percentage of gamers actually see out the end of most games; most lose interest and try the latest hot game when it comes out. It seems akin to staging a basketball game where everyone leaves at 1/2 time; if that happened, you'd have to think it was a flawed product or delivery model to begin with.