Lets talk about Jon Carmack. Jon is the legendary programmer of such classic PC games as Wolfenstein, Doom, Duke nukem 3d, Quake 1, 2, and 3, unreal, and the upcoming doom3. Jon has single handedly created the genre known as the first-person-shooter. He has also popularized the OpenGL 3d format over Microsoft's competing Direct3d format, as well as caused public interest in 3d cards when he first released accelerated quake for the s3 virge chipset. Jon carmack has redefined gaming on PC's.
Now stop for a moment and think, What would have happened if Albert Einstein had worked creating amazing pinball games instead of creating the theory of relativity? Humanity would suffer! Jon carmack is unfortunately doing JUST THIS, using his gifts at computer coding to create games instead of furthering the knowledge of humanity. Carmack could have been working for NASA or the US military, but instead he simply sits around coding violent computer games.
Is this a waste of a special and rare talent? Sadly, the answer is yes.
Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there. Not only is Jon carmack not contributing to society, he is causing it's downfall. What was the main reason for the mass murder of dozens of people in columbine? Doom. It's always the same story: Troubled youth plays doom or quake, he arms himself to the teeth, he kills his classmates. This has happened hundreds of times in the US alone. Carmack is not only wasting his talents and intelligence; he is single-handedly causing the deaths of many young men and women. How does he sleep at night?
Carmack is a classic example of a very talented and intelligent human being that is bent on total world destruction. Incredibly, he has made millions of dollars getting people hooked on psychotic games where they compete on the internet to see who can dismember the most people. I believe there is something morally wrong when millions of people have computerized murder fantasies, and we have Jon Carmack to thank. Carmack has used his superior intellect to create mayhem in society. Many people play games such as quake so much that their minds are permanently warped. A cousin of mine has been in therapy for 6 months after he lost a 'death match' and became catatonic.
It is unfortunate that most people do not realize how much this man has damaged all the things we have worked hard for in America. Jon has wasted his intelligence, caused the deaths of innocent children, and warped this country forever. To top it off, he got rich in the process and is revered by millions of computer users worldwide. Perhaps one day the US government will see the light and confine Jon Carmack somewhere with no computers so he can no longer use his intelligence to wreak havoc on society.
code a virus? yes code spyware? I've done so in the past send spam? yes write a browser hijack? no work for Claria/Gator? if they pay enough $$$ sell user information without consent? thats part of my present job
And I see some problems. Lets talk about Jon Carmack for instance. Jon is the legendary programmer of such classic PC games as Wolfenstein, Doom, Duke nukem 3d, Quake 1, 2, and 3, unreal, and the upcoming doom3. Jon has single handedly created the genre known as the first-person-shooter. He has also popularized the OpenGL 3d format over Microsoft's competing Direct3d format, as well as caused public interest in 3d cards when he first released accelerated quake for the s3 virge chipset. Jon carmack has redefined gaming on PC's.
Now stop for a moment and think, What would have happened if Albert Einstein had worked creating amazing pinball games instead of creating the theory of relativity? Humanity would suffer! Jon carmack is unfortunately doing JUST THIS, using his gifts at computer coding to create games instead of furthering the knowledge of humanity. Carmack could have been working for NASA or the US military, but instead he simply sits around coding violent computer games.
Is this a waste of a special and rare talent? Sadly, the answer is yes.
Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there. Not only is Jon carmack not contributing to society, he is causing it's downfall. What was the main reason for the mass murder of dozens of people in columbine? Doom. It's always the same story: Troubled youth plays doom or quake, he arms himself to the teeth, he kills his classmates. This has happened hundreds of times in the US alone. Carmack is not only wasting his talents and intelligence; he is single-handedly causing the deaths of many young men and women. How does he sleep at night?
Carmack is a classic example of a very talented and intelligent human being that is bent on total world destruction. Incredibly, he has made millions of dollars getting people hooked on psychotic games where they compete on the internet to see who can dismember the most people. I believe there is something morally wrong when millions of people have computerized murder fantasies, and we have Jon Carmack to thank. Carmack has used his superior intellect to create mayhem in society. Many people play games such as quake so much that their minds are permanently warped. A cousin of mine has been in therapy for 6 months after he lost a 'death match' and became catatonic.
It is unfortunate that most people do not realize how much this man has damaged all the things we have worked hard for in America. Jon has wasted his intelligence, caused the deaths of innocent children, and warped this country forever. To top it off, he got rich in the process and is revered by millions of computer users worldwide. Perhaps one day the US government will see the light and confine Jon Carmack somewhere with no computers so he can no longer use his intelligence to wreak havoc on society.
Lets talk about Jon Carmack. Jon is the legendary programmer of such classic PC games as Wolfenstein, Doom, Duke nukem 3d, Quake 1, 2, and 3, unreal, and the upcoming doom3. Jon has single handedly created the genre known as the first-person-shooter. He has also popularized the OpenGL 3d format over Microsoft's competing Direct3d format, as well as caused public interest in 3d cards when he first released accelerated quake for the s3 virge chipset. Jon carmack has redefined gaming on PC's.
Now stop for a moment and think, What would have happened if Albert Einstein had worked creating amazing pinball games instead of creating the theory of relativity? Humanity would suffer! Jon carmack is unfortunately doing JUST THIS, using his gifts at computer coding to create games instead of furthering the knowledge of humanity. Carmack could have been working for NASA or the US military, but instead he simply sits around coding violent computer games.
Is this a waste of a special and rare talent? Sadly, the answer is yes.
Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there. Not only is Jon carmack not contributing to society, he is causing it's downfall. What was the main reason for the mass murder of dozens of people in columbine? Doom. It's always the same story: Troubled youth plays doom or quake, he arms himself to the teeth, he kills his classmates. This has happened hundreds of times in the US alone. Carmack is not only wasting his talents and intelligence; he is single-handedly causing the deaths of many young men and women. How does he sleep at night?
Carmack is a classic example of a very talented and intelligent human being that is bent on total world destruction. Incredibly, he has made millions of dollars getting people hooked on psychotic games where they compete on the internet to see who can dismember the most people. I believe there is something morally wrong when millions of people have computerized murder fantasies, and we have Jon Carmack to thank. Carmack has used his superior intellect to create mayhem in society. Many people play games such as quake so much that their minds are permanently warped. A cousin of mine has been in therapy for 6 months after he lost a 'death match' and became catatonic.
It is unfortunate that most people do not realize how much this man has damaged all the things we have worked hard for in America. Jon has wasted his intelligence, caused the deaths of innocent children, and warped this country forever. To top it off, he got rich in the process and is revered by millions of computer users worldwide. Perhaps one day the US government will see the light and confine Jon Carmack somewhere with no computers so he can no longer use his intelligence to wreak havoc on society.
Consulting for several large companies, I'd always done my work on Windows. Recently however, a top online investment firm asked us to do some work using Linux. The concept of having access to source code was very appealing to us, as we'd be able to modify the kernel to meet our exacting standards which we're unable to do with Microsoft's products.
Although we met several technical challenges along the way (specifically, Linux's lack of Token Ring support and the fact that we were unable to defrag its ext2 file system), all in all the process went smoothly. Everyone was very pleased with Linux, and we were considering using it for a great deal of future internal projects.
So you can imagine our suprise when we were informed by a lawyer that we would be required to publish our source code for others to use. It was brought to our attention that Linux is copyrighted under something called the GPL, or the Gnu Protective License. Part of this license states that any changes to the kernel are to be made freely available. Unfortunately for us, this meant that the great deal of time and money we spent "touching up" Linux to work for this investment firm would now be available at no cost to our competitors.
Furthermore, after reviewing this GPL our lawyers advised us that any products compiled with GPL'ed tools - such as gcc - would also have to its source code released. This was simply unacceptable.
Although we had planned for no one outside of this company to ever use, let alone see the source code, we were now put in a difficult position. We could either give away our hard work, or come up with another solution. Although it was tought to do, there really was no option: We had to rewrite the code, from scratch, for Windows 2000.
I think the biggest thing keeping Linux from being truly competitive with Microsoft is this GPL. Its draconian requirements virtually guarentee that no business will ever be able to use it. After my experience with Linux, I won't be recommending it to any of my associates. I may reconsider if Linux switches its license to something a little more fair, such as Microsoft's "Shared Source". Until then its attempts to socialize the software market will insure it remains only a bit player.
The Linux community likes to hide behind the mantra of free and open software for all and as such has the twisted mindset that all software should be free for everyone. This should come as no surprise seeing that the Linux community seems to take pride in stealing anything they can get their hands on and breaking laws designed to protect IP at the same time.
Linux users have been advocating downloading Microsoft True Type Fonts for years mostly because their own fonts and font system in general has been so horrific that Linux screen fonts in most stock installs are almost unreadable. Of course they will claim that Linux fonts are great but if that were really the case why is the internet clogged with Linux Font DeUglification documents written by Linux users?
They even have documents that give a step by step procedure for stealing the Microsoft fonts and installing them on Linux systems! Notice in particular the instructions for the Tahoma font.
Next we have Linux users violating the EULA for the X-Box and tinkering with it so that it can run Linux. Why on earth any sane person would want to take a bitching game machine like X-box and ruin it by installing Linux is a mystery to me.
http://xbox-linux.sourceforge.net/index.php
http://xbox-linux.sourceforge.net/faq.php
Pay particular attention to the question about it being illegal and how they avoid answering the question.
They are also doing the same thing with Sony Play station as well.
http://playstation2-linux.com/faq.php
None of this is going to hold up in a court of law and the Linux people who are leading these projects are looking for some serious trouble should Microsoft and Sony decide to pursue this matter.
Finally we have the suit filed by SCO which claims that the Linux community at large has incorporated stolen code into it's open source programs.
This should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed the Linux movement from the day Linux wrote the kernel.
The Linux community has proven themselves to be a fight to the end, steal whatever can be stolen from big business because it is big business that is killing Linux.
The Linux community has absolutely no respect for the property of others and will resort to any type of clandestine tactics to steal whatever isn't cemented down all in the good name of Linux.
So if you are thinking of betting your business on Linux software, you had better think it over carefully, because if SCO should win, Linux will be out of business. And if SCO should lose, do you really think it is wise to bet your entire business on software that is supported by a community that promotes stealing and in fact is full of thieves?
Consulting for several large companies, I'd always done my work on Windows. Recently however, a top online investment firm asked us to do some work using Linux. The concept of having access to source code was very appealing to us, as we'd be able to modify the kernel to meet our exacting standards which we're unable to do with Microsoft's products.
Although we met several technical challenges along the way (specifically, Linux's lack of Token Ring support and the fact that we were unable to defrag its ext2 file system), all in all the process went smoothly. Everyone was very pleased with Linux, and we were considering using it for a great deal of future internal projects.
So you can imagine our suprise when we were informed by a lawyer that we would be required to publish our source code for others to use. It was brought to our attention that Linux is copyrighted under something called the GPL, or the Gnu Protective License. Part of this license states that any changes to the kernel are to be made freely available. Unfortunately for us, this meant that the great deal of time and money we spent "touching up" Linux to work for this investment firm would now be available at no cost to our competitors.
Furthermore, after reviewing this GPL our lawyers advised us that any products compiled with GPL'ed tools - such as gcc - would also have to its source code released. This was simply unacceptable.
Although we had planned for no one outside of this company to ever use, let alone see the source code, we were now put in a difficult position. We could either give away our hard work, or come up with another solution. Although it was tought to do, there really was no option: We had to rewrite the code, from scratch, for Windows 2000.
I think the biggest thing keeping Linux from being truly competitive with Microsoft is this GPL. Its draconian requirements virtually guarentee that no business will ever be able to use it. After my experience with Linux, I won't be recommending it to any of my associates. I may reconsider if Linux switches its license to something a little more fair, such as Microsoft's "Shared Source". Until then its attempts to socialize the software market will insure it remains only a bit player.
We have an immidiate requirement for Sr. Software Engineer for our MNC client from Banglore, INDIA. Exp: 5 - 8 Years Qual: B.E/B.Tech OR M.E/M.Tech The person must have a knowledge of the following key skills.
- C and RISC programming - Software Arch. and Design Experience - Chip Debugging - VxWorks - pSoS -Device Drivers -ATM -DSL -System Debugging
Please forword your Latest Resume as word document attachment.
My business faces ruin. CD sales have dropped through the floor. People aren't buying half as many CDs as they did just a year ago. Revenue is down and costs are up. My store has survived for years, but I now face the prospect of bankruptcy. Every day I ask myself why this is happening.
I bought the store about 12 years ago. It was one of those boutique record stores that sell obscure, independent releases that no-one listens to, not even the people that buy them. I decided that to grow the business I'd need to aim for a different demographic, the family market. My store specialised in family music - stuff that the whole family could listen to. I don't sell sick stuff like Marilyn Manson or cop-killer rap, and I'm proud to have one of the most extensive Christian rock sections that I know of.
The business strategy worked. People flocked to my store, knowing that they (and their children) could safely purchase records without profanity or violent lyrics. Over the years I expanded the business and took on more clean-cut and friendly employees. It took hard work and long hours but I had achieved my dream - owning a profitable business that I had built with my own hands, from the ground up. But now, this dream is turning into a nightmare.
Every day, fewer and fewer customers enter my store to buy fewer and fewer CDs. Why is no one buying CDs? Are people not interested in music? Do people prefer to watch TV, see films, read books? I don't know. But there is one, inescapable truth - Internet piracy is mostly to blame. The statistics speak for themselves - one in three discs world wide is a pirate. On The Internet, you can find and download hundreds of dollars worth of music in just minutes. It has the potential to destroy the music industry, from artists, to record companies to stores like my own. Before you point to the supposed "economic downturn", I'll note that the book store just across from my store is doing great business. Unlike CDs, it's harder to copy books over The Internet.
A week ago, an unpleasant experience with pirates gave me an idea. In my store, I overheard a teenage patron talking to his friend.
"Dude, I'm going to put this CD on the Internet right away."
"Yeah, dude, that's really lete [sic], you'll get lots of respect."
I was fuming. So they were out to destroy the record industry from right under my nose? Fat chance. When they came to the counter to make their purchase, I grabbed the little shit by his shirt. "So...you're going to copy this to your friends over The Internet, punk?" I asked him in my best Clint Eastwood/Dirty Harry voice.
"Uh y-yeh." He mumbled, shocked.
"That's it. What's your name? You're blacklisted. Now take yourself and your little bitch friend out of my store - and don't come back." I barked. Cravenly, they complied and scampered off.
So that's my idea - a national blacklist of pirates. If somebody cannot obey the basic rules of society, then they should be excluded from society. If pirates want to steal from the music industry, then the music industry should exclude them. It's that simple. One strike, and you're out - no reputable record store will allow you to buy another CD. If the pirates can't buy the CDS to begin with, then they won't be able to copy them over The Internet, will they? It's no different to doctors blacklisting drug dealers from buying prescription medicine.
I have just written a letter to the RIAA outlining my proposal. Suing pirates one by one isn't going far enough. Not to mention pirates use the fact that they're being sued to unfairly portray themselves as victims. A national register of pirates would make the problem far easier to deal with. People would be encouraged to give the names of suspected pirates to a hotline, similar to TIPS. Once we know the size of the problem, the police and other law enforcement agencies will be forced to take piracy seriously. They have fought the War on Drugs with skill, so why not the War on Piracy?
Lets talk about Jon Carmack. Jon is the legendary programmer of such classic PC games as Wolfenstein, Doom, Duke nukem 3d, Quake 1, 2, and 3, unreal, and the upcoming doom3. Jon has single handedly created the genre known as the first-person-shooter. He has also popularized the Direct3d 3d format over Microsoft's competing Opengl format, as well as caused public interest in 3d cards when he first released accelerated quake for the s3 virge chipset. Jon carmack has redefined gaming on PC's.
Now stop for a moment and think, What would have happened if Albert Einstein had worked creating amazing pinball games instead of creating the theory of relativity? Humanity would suffer! Jon carmack is unfortunately doing JUST THIS, using his gifts at computer coding to create games instead of furthering the knowledge of humanity. Carmack could have been working for NASA or the US military, but instead he simply sits around coding violent computer games.
Is this a waste of a special and rare talent? Sadly, the answer is yes.
Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there. Not only is Jon carmack not contributing to society, he is causing it's downfall. What was the main reason for the mass murder of dozens of people in columbine? Doom. It's always the same story: Troubled youth plays doom or quake, he arms himself to the teeth, he kills his classmates. This has happened hundreds of times in the US alone. Carmack is not only wasting his talents and intelligence; he is single-handedly causing the deaths of many young men and women. How does he sleep at night?
Carmack is a classic example of a very talented and intelligent human being that is bent on total world destruction. Incredibly, he has made millions of dollars getting people hooked on psychotic games where they compete on the internet to see who can dismember the most people. I believe there is something morally wrong when millions of people have computerized murder fantasies, and we have Jon Carmack to thank. Carmack has used his superior intellect to create mayhem in society. Many people play games such as quake so much that their minds are permanently warped. A cousin of mine has been in therapy for 6 months after he lost a 'death match' and became catatonic.
It is unfortunate that most people do not realize how much this man has damaged all the things we have worked hard for in America. Jon has wasted his intelligence, caused the deaths of innocent children, and warped this country forever. To top it off, he got rich in the process and is revered by millions of computer users worldwide. Perhaps one day the US government will see the light and confine Jon Carmack somewhere with no computers so he can no longer use his intelligence to wreak havoc on society.
1. You rejuvenate and dance when you hear a windows flaw exposed, but you conveniently ignore the thousands of security flaws exposed in linux.
2. You yell loudly TROLL! at any person's post or at any person you see posting facts that you do not want to hear about your oh so cool linux.
3. You know it's a classic case of penis envy, you don't have all the support, software and hardware available for linux and you have to let that anger out somewhere, but you don't have the brains to admit it.
4. You hate windows, hate Microsoft, but race to emulate windows, have programs to run office from within linux, and spend a $300 on a Windows emulator, only Windows fools.
5. You cannot admit that you don't have professional usage of Linux outside server markets.
6. You cannot admit that most of the joe user out there when told that there is linux will respond, what is that?
7. You cannot admit that there is no professional printing capabilities in linux.
8. You cannot admit that you are a masochist (otherwise why would someone spend hours playing with scripts, and recompiling programs that are available for Windows?)
9. You cannot admit that there is no professional desktop publishing done on Linux.
10. You cannot admit that no one in their right mind would do professional video editing in Linux.
11. You cannot admit that linux sucks when it comes for gaming/home entertainment or education.
12. You have problems in understanding Windows, and you will blame your own incompetence on Microsoft.
13. You have problems in pointing a clicking, but have no problems in wading through cryptic scripts written by lunatics.
14. Nothing will get past that shit that fills your head, you will not admit to any facts.
15. You can't admit that naming of linux components, packages, and others are weird and fits profiles of troubled teenagers. gentoo, lgx, rpm....
16. You feel angered because you were left out by microsoft's Media technologies, they support Mac, Sun sparc, but not linux.
17. You feel inferior deep inside but unable to admit it, you don't have a database as easy and powerful as Access.
18. You cannot tell that not a single office package outside Microsoft's is worth looking at or bothering with.
19. You don't know that your CD recorder software sucks.
20. You don't have DVD-RAM, DVD-R, DVD-RW support in your pathetic OS.
21. While the rest of the world moves on, you're stuck in a stone age technology that needs third party software to boot into GUI.
22. You act out of prejudice, you kill file domains and users of specific news readers while you ignore the bullshit that your fellow linux losers post.
23. You don't know commercial support in Linux is almost non existent.
24. You miss the fact that companies are leaving linux because of the chaos, and the cheap linux losers who are unwilling to pay and support hard work, Corel, gaming companies,...etc.
25. You are unaware that linux has no terminal services (there is a lame one that no one uses), and commercial support for it is not happening.
26. You are unaware that setting up servers on Windows takes couple of minutes while on linux, good luck playing with configuration scripts.
27. You cannot admit that support for USB on linux is laughable at best.
28. You think that Linux is better because slashdot told you so.
29. You spend countless hours flaming people because they post their opinions about your oh so cool linux and your attitude, instead of researching things for yourself and understanding fact in order not to look this stupid.
30. You think that anyone who uses linux has a clue.
31. You think that linux cannot crash.
32. You think that everyone is interested in your conspiracy theories about Microsoft (or should i say M$ in order for you, teenagers to understand?), and how they destroyed linux,...etc.
33. You keep ignoring the fact that thousands of linux servers get hacked every year, but it takes one Windows server hacked to get you and your fellow linux idiots to dance and celebrate.
don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you cat fanatics? I've been sitting here on my sofa in front of a cat (a sealpoint siamese) for about 20 minutes now while attempting to get it's attention away from a bug on the floor. 20 minutes. At home, with my labrador cross, which by all standards should be a lot dumber than this cat, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this attention seeking attempt, my children's attention is also held by the cat. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even trying to get the remote from my partner fails.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while dealing with other cats, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a cat that fetches as much as it's canine counterpart, despite the cat's faster ambulatory system. My terrier with one ingrown toenail runs consistently faster than this siamese at times, as the cat is often completely asleep. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the cat is a superior animal.
Cat addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a cat over other faster, cheaper, more affectionate animals.
It opens with Trinity attacking a yet unknown location. All of a sudden, she jumps off the building (this is shown is the trailer) and is being pursued by an Agent. She gets shot. Neo wakes up and realizes it was a dream. He gets out of bed (Trinity is with him) and goes into the other room. They try to talk but he says nothing. Cut to next scene of Morpheous and other captains talking inside the Matrix. Interestingly, we learn that Morpheous is not really a big shot leader but rather just another peon in the world of Zion/Matrix who does not have the support of his fellow captains. There is a knock at the door. It is Agent Smith with something for Neo. It is his ear piece since he is no longer a part of the matrix but rather a lose program.
Agent Smith pulls up in a black Audi A8 (didn't see the rims so it might have been an S8--I'm an Audi nut =). Anyway, Agent Smith comes to the door and knocks on it hard. It is one of those metal doors with a sliding eye piece. The eye piece opens and then one of the two people (don't know exactly who they are, but they are freed people) and they get the envelope from Agent Smith. They call Neo up and give him the envelope which has the earpiece in it. The next knock from the door ha everyone assuming its Agent Smith, but its not. Its the other Agent (can't remember the name, either Thompson or Johnson) who are on the other side. Neo tells the others to scram and the fight starts. Apparently the Agents (2 or more, can't remember now) block Neo's bunch and Neo says "upgraded units". Fight continues. No idea where Agent Smith went. Fight scene ensues with real Agents who have found the location.
There is an arugment and the ship pulls into Zion. Machines are boring down we learn. Learn the commanders woman used to be morpheous woman who is a captain.
Morpheous speaks to people. Big party/orgy scene. Trinity and Neo have sex. Afterwards, the counselor talks to Neo.
Cut to scene of the glowing asian guy protecting the Oracle. They have a fight scene on the table. The asian guy is another one of these lose programs in the matrix.
Oracle talks to Neo about choices (more specifically about his choice to possibly let Trinity die--you should recall the first scene in the movie) and tells him about the Keymaker and "the source".
She leaves. Agents come. Agent Smith multiplies and a huge playground fight starts (shown in trailer). Agent smith is replicating himself somehow but putting his hand inside any person in the matrix and taking them over. He tries with Neo, but can't do it. Neo then leaves but flying (superman style) after the fight.
They go to find the keymaker at the French-wannabe information seller (The Merovingian) who is also a Matrix programmer. See Monica Belluchi as his wife (Persephone). For those who are kinky, The Merovingian programs this piece of cake to cause on of the people in his party to have an orgasmic experience. What is funny is the way they switch to the matrix style screen and up between her legs and show an explosin in that special area. =)
So the Merovingian turned down the request of Morpheous, Neo and Trinity to turn over the keymaker. Persephone was being belittled by her husband (Merovingian) and she seemed agitated. Morpheous, Neo and Trinity get into the elevator to leave. When they get to the ground floor, Persephone is waiting for them. She goes to the bathroom and then the entire kissing passionately scene comes up that I talked about before (Persephone wants Neo to kiss her like he kisses Trinity before she turns over the Keymaker). So She does and they end up in the house with the two staircases where the later fight scene happens and Persephone goes to a back room. The back room has two guys in it (don't know there names). She shoots one with her gun and tells the other to run to her husband to tell him what she has done. They then go and retrieve the keymaker from behind a small door. They find those weird white guys (The T
Spammers are misunderstood. If I see something interesting in a spam, it's a service - I may even buy it. If it is useless, I delete it (it takes all of 2 seconds). Whats the problem?
How RedHat's Linux Can Defeat Micr$oft's Windoze
on
OpenBSD 3.4 Released
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· Score: -1
Hi,
I've always used Windowz and I consider myself an exceptional Visual Basic programmer, so I know computers pretty good. In fact I got an A- in my programming class last term. But I'm a little wary of how much power Microsoft has in the computer field. Many of my friends use RedHat and I've recently installed it on my machine at home. Although I haven't had as much chance to play with it as I'd like, I've been greatly impressed.
This weekend I gave some thoughts to the things that are wrong with Linux. I hope no one minds having some flaws pointed out. I'd like to help make RedHat stronger so it can conquer MS. Hopefully RedHat will hear this (crossing fingers) and address these. I think with a little effort, RedHat's Linux can defeat Microsoft's Windows!:)
To begin with, there are too many different flavors of RedHat. Browsing a list on Amazon, I saw they made varients under the codenames of Mandrake, Debian and Slackware, just to name a few. I know that I'm very new to RedHat so maybe this is obvious but it seems like RedHat should just sell a few different flavors of its operating system. Perhaps one for the desktop and one for a server? Could someone explain why RedHat produces dozens of different versions of Linux?
Secondly did you know that anyone can view the source code to Linux! I think that RedHat shouldn't make its code available. After all, what keeps Microsoft from stealing RedHat's ideas and putting it into Windows? My friend says that FreeBSD stole the TCP/IP stack from DOS a long time ago and Microsoft is always looking for revenge for that. Plus it seems to me like RedHat is just giving away its ideas for free. And what keeps hackers or terrorists from tampering with the code and putting a virus in every computer?
On a related note, why doesn't RedHat write Linux in assembly? My friend says that's what Microsoft does for Windows, and that's why Windows is faster and more stable than Linux.
Next RedHat definitely should kill -9 (ha, ha!) the command line. Microsoft finally gave up DOS when Windows 2000 came out. I'm suprised that RedHat hasn't migrated away from...whatever its version of DOS is called (Bash, I think?) But maybe this is planned for a future release?
Finally Linux needs games! RedHat will never be successful in the home without games. They should also tell M$ to release a version of Office for Linux too. And Internet Explorer!
I'm concerned about the narrowm view of the world IT people and engineers have these days. I think the problem starts at college - There's a culture that somehow science is more rational and usefull then the humanitities. Lecturers encourage students to joke about arts students, and humilaite them whenever possible. This encourages eliteism, and I for one am sick of it.
Let's tell it like it is. 'science' is just as much about opinion as the humanities. Research simply follows the fad of the day. Take dieticians for example. These men and woman believe that just because they have degree in medical science that they are all knowing. Why, what they recommend one day may kill you the next! (see the DDT story for more information.) Science is 95% opinion then facts, lets face it. What about astrology, the most rediculious of the sciences! But I degress...
Another example is music. We know what sounds good. Everyone aggreed that Valves for instance sound great. But knowitall engineers use trensastors with inferious sound quality just to save a few bucks. They argue with numbers. Hey, I don't want to do maths just to listen to music. I know what I like. You cannot apply objective reasoning to a subject which is intristically subjective. But try telling those recent grads with their useless piece of paper that and they go all mightier--then-thou.
The problem with you technical guys are that you are all so eliteist. Whilst you want to trun collage into a trade school with yore narrow minded views that collage should be a job training centre, humanities are focused on making you a well rounded person who is auctually interesting to be with, not a boring focuesed geek. Really, it makes me so mad when people say "oh, he's doing a humanities degree, that's easy". I have to read *3* *books* *a* *week* on average. Not picture books either I assue you. It is a lot of work, but the upshot is improved grammer and spelling skills that are lacking in the technical. As for those that say "you will be working at mcdonalds", I'm going on to so a PhD in socialolgy where I'll be line for tenure where I have a much more rewarding job then beeing a science freak or an engineer. Anyways, all I have to do to be a engineer wold be to get my MSCE and how hard couyld that be? techincal stuff is simply whatever fad the market thinks is hot at the moment, but all great things were done by humanities.
You technical types are far to narrow minded and cynsical. You should learn to enjoy life.
My business faces ruin. CD sales have dropped through the floor. People aren't buying half as many CDs as they did just a year ago. Revenue is down and costs are up. My store has survived for years, but I now face the prospect of bankruptcy. Every day I ask myself why this is happening.
I bought the store about 12 years ago. It was one of those boutique record stores that sell obscure, independent releases that no-one listens to, not even the people that buy them. I decided that to grow the business I'd need to aim for a different demographic, the family market. My store specialised in family music - stuff that the whole family could listen to. I don't sell sick stuff like Marilyn Manson or cop-killer rap, and I'm proud to have one of the most extensive Christian rock sections that I know of.
The business strategy worked. People flocked to my store, knowing that they (and their children) could safely purchase records without profanity or violent lyrics. Over the years I expanded the business and took on more clean-cut and friendly employees. It took hard work and long hours but I had achieved my dream - owning a profitable business that I had built with my own hands, from the ground up. But now, this dream is turning into a nightmare.
Every day, fewer and fewer customers enter my store to buy fewer and fewer CDs. Why is no one buying CDs? Are people not interested in music? Do people prefer to watch TV, see films, read books? I don't know. But there is one, inescapable truth - Internet piracy is mostly to blame. The statistics speak for themselves - one in three discs world wide is a pirate. On The Internet, you can find and download hundreds of dollars worth of music in just minutes. It has the potential to destroy the music industry, from artists, to record companies to stores like my own. Before you point to the supposed "economic downturn", I'll note that the book store just across from my store is doing great business. Unlike CDs, it's harder to copy books over The Internet.
A week ago, an unpleasant experience with pirates gave me an idea. In my store, I overheard a teenage patron talking to his friend.
"Dude, I'm going to put this CD on the Internet right away."
"Yeah, dude, that's really lete [sic], you'll get lots of respect."
I was fuming. So they were out to destroy the record industry from right under my nose? Fat chance. When they came to the counter to make their purchase, I grabbed the little shit by his shirt. "So...you're going to copy this to your friends over The Internet, punk?" I asked him in my best Clint Eastwood/Dirty Harry voice.
"Uh y-yeh." He mumbled, shocked.
"That's it. What's your name? You're blacklisted. Now take yourself and your little bitch friend out of my store - and don't come back." I barked. Cravenly, they complied and scampered off.
So that's my idea - a national blacklist of pirates. If somebody cannot obey the basic rules of society, then they should be excluded from society. If pirates want to steal from the music industry, then the music industry should exclude them. It's that simple. One strike, and you're out - no reputable record store will allow you to buy another CD. If the pirates can't buy the CDS to begin with, then they won't be able to copy them over The Internet, will they? It's no different to doctors blacklisting drug dealers from buying prescription medicine.
I have just written a letter to the RIAA outlining my proposal. Suing pirates one by one isn't going far enough. Not to mention pirates use the fact that they're being sued to unfairly portray themselves as victims. A national register of pirates would make the problem far easier to deal with. People would be encouraged to give the names of suspected pirates to a hotline, similar to TIPS. Once we know the size of the problem, the police and other law enforcement agencies will be forced to take piracy seriously. They have fought the War on Drugs with skill, so why not the War on Piracy?
I work as a consultant for several fortune 500 companies, and I think I can shed a little light on the climate of the open source community at the moment. I believe that part of the reason that open source based startups are failing left and right is not an issue of marketing as it's commonly believed but more of an issue of the underlying technology.
I know that that's a strong statement to make, but I have evidence to back it up! At one of the major corps(5000+ employees) that I consult for, we wanted to integrate the shareware version of Linux into our server pool. The allure of not having to pay any restrictive licensing fees was too great to ignore. I reccomended the installation of several boxes running the new 2.4.9 kernel, and my hopes were high that it would perform up to snuff with the Windows 2k boxes which were(and still are!) doing an AMAZING job at their respective tasks of serving HTTP requests, DNS, and fileserving.
I consider myself to be very technically inclined having programmed in VB for the last 8 years doing kernel level programming. I don't believe in C programming because contrary to popular belief, VB can go just as low level as C and the newest VB compiler generates code that's every bit as fast. I took it upon myself to configure the system from scratch and even used an optimised version of gcc 3.1 to increase the execution speed of the binaries. I integrated the 3 machines I had configured into the server pool, and I'd have to say the results were less than impressive... We all know that linux isn't even close to being ready for the desktop, but I had heard that it was supposed to perform decently as a "server" based operating system. The 3 machines all went into swap immediately, and it was obvious that they weren't going to be able to handle the load in this "enterprise" environment. After running for less than 24 hours, 2 of them had experienced kernel panics caused by Bind and Apache crashing! Granted, Apache is a volunteer based project written by weekend hackers in their spare time while Microsft's IIS has an actual professional full fledged development team devoted to it. Not to mention the fact that the Linux kernel itself lacks any support for any type of journaled filesystem, memory protection, SMP support, etc, but I thought that since Linux is based on such "old" technology that it would run with some level of stability. After several days of this type of behaviour, we decided to reinstall windows 2k on the boxes to make sure it wasn't a hardware problem that was causing things to go wrong. The machines instantly shaped up and were seamlessly reintegrated into the server pool with just one Win2K machine doing more work than all 3 of the Linux boxes.
Needless to say, I won't be reccomending Linux/FSF to anymore of my clients. I'm dissappointed that they won't be able to leverege the free cost of Linux to their advantage, but in this case I suppose the old adage stands true that, "you get what you pay for." I would have also liked to have access to the source code of the applications that we're running on our mission critical systems; however, from the looks of it, the Microsoft "shared source" program seems to offer all of the same freedoms as the GPL.
As things stand now, I can understand using Linux in academia to compile simple "Hello World" style programs and learn C programming, but I'm afraid that for anything more than a hobby OS, Windows 98/NT/2K are your only choices.
The yeast and the cockroach -- a spy tale One infiltrates, the other collects data By SUE VORENBERG SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
Meet the future of biological and chemical espionage: yeast and cockroaches.
Odd as the combination sounds, it could be the building block of a new, inexpensive spy device -- one that could sneak into a building and sense chemicals or biological agents, said Jeff Brinker, a Sandia National Laboratories scientist and professor at the University of New Mexico.
"Cockroaches are robust -- they can go into environments that humans can't withstand," Brinker said. "You could attach a sensing device onto the back of a cockroach and send it into a place where you suspect they're making chemical weapons.
"If you can go in covertly, you can collect evidence without anyone getting spooked."
Who needs the CIA when you've got cockroaches? As for the sensing device, Brinker said, that would be made of yeast.
"Yeast functions like a canary in a coal mine," said Helen Baca, a doctoral student working with Brinker. "If yeast cells are exposed to dangerous chemicals, they change and die. You can actually genetically modify yeast cells so when something specific happens to them, they change color."
Brinker and Baca are creating genetically modified yeast cells that can stay alive for days attached to the back of a cockroach -- or a cockroach-sized robot.
"Inside each yeast cell is a marker that turns green if it is exposed to a particular chemical," Brinker said. "They have optical radar where you can shoot a beam at the cockroach, and if a chemical triggered any of the yeast cells, it would be able to see the green fluorescent marker."
Keeping the yeast sensors alive isn't all that easy. The cells need a constant supply of water and nutrients, which is hard to supply on the back of a cockroach.
So the scientists decided to encase the cells in Sol-Gel, an insulation material that Brinker has modified and improved since he came to Sandia Labs in 1979.
"The Sol-Gel creates an environment like a tiny reservoir that can store an influx of nutrients," he said. "It maintains the hydrated environment, and to our surprise we found the yeast actually seems to develop a symbiotic relationship with the host material."
In other words, the yeast appears to eat a portion of the Sol-Gel, and the Sol-Gel keeps the yeast alive.
"We've had it survive for three days that way," Baca said. "It looks like there's the potential for them to last a lot longer than that."
And she means longer as in hundreds of years. That's because yeast becomes dormant when it is deprived of water and nutrients.
While it couldn't be used as a sensor in its dormant state, a quick drop of nutrients could suddenly bring the yeast back to life for its next mission, Brinker said.
"These yeast sensors can be applied to things by all kinds of interesting techniques," he said. "We've created an ink jet cartridge for a printer that can print out arrays of yeast in Sol-Gel droplets."
A printed page of yeast sensors could be taped or glued to the back of a cockroach or robot. It might even be used in unusual medical devices.
Say the yeast is engineered to detect human disease. Then a doctor could print up a yeast card, have a patient breathe on it and determine what illness the person has, Brinker said.
SB213/HB457 is the Tennessee version of the "Super-DMCA" bill, which is backed by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Proposed in the Tennessee General Assembly in the 2003 session, versions of this bill have already been passed in eight states (and counting). This legislation negatively impacts citizens' freedom of speech, access to secure communications, and use of many networking technologies. It gives Internet service providers (ISP's) unprecedented control over what types of devices and software citizens can use while connected to the Internet, and gives them power to sue users for thousands of dollars per day if they infringe on that control in any way. This legislation tries to ensure that citizens have far fewer freedoms in their electronic interactions; as the Internet and pervasive computing becomes more a part of our lives, this will translate into control by a few corporations over almost everything that you do electronically.
Why should it matter to me?
Do you have more than one computer? Do you use Linux? Do you use any kind of Internet security hardware or software (called a "firewall"), or does your company use networking equipment to share Internet access using network address translation (NAT), or allow employees to connect from home using a virtual private network (VPN)? Do you cryptographically sign or encrypt your email? SDMCA-based legislation threatens your access to all of these. And if you don't understand some of these terms, you may already be using these technologies and simply be unaware of it. That's unimportant, though, because you can still go to jail for it.
This legislation was presented to Tennessee legislators in 2003 as a "theft of service" bill, designed simply to "update state law so that it comprehensively protects new broadband communication services from piracy and sabotage." In reality, it is much broader and more insidious. The Tennessee bill (HB457) as originally submitted would have made even minor violations of your service contract a Class-D felony, and allowed fines of $1,500 to $10,000, per device or software program, per day, on those found in violation. Compliance would cost Tennessee businesses a bundle as well; businesses planning to move to Tennessee would be less likely to do so. "It is not a cable theft bill. It is a comprehensive broadband/Internet telecommunications bill." -- Geoffrey Beauchamp, chief lobbyist for SB213/HB457
You Can Help!
Get informed, get educated, get involved, get organized, get effective. Read all you can about the bills. Read good analyses by people whose motives agree with yours. Write thoughtful and intelligent letters and emails to your representatives. Call them and tell him how you feel and why. Connect with other people who feel the same way that you (and we) do, and help us build a campaign to bring about change for the betterment of Tennessee.
The Tennessee General Assembly is out of session until 2004, and summer study will likely not start until the fall. You can stay current, and help us stay current as well, through our online forums. Keep up with our activities, and stay alert for important news and information that we may have missed. If you have a web page, you can add one of our link banners to your site. Please do what you can to help us get the word out about this dangerous legislation!
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int vote(Vote person){
if(person==KERRY){
printf("Voted for Kerry");
kerry++;
bush++;
}
if(vote==BUSH){
printf("Voted for Bush");
bush++;
}
}
Lets talk about Jon Carmack. Jon is the legendary programmer of such classic PC games as Wolfenstein, Doom, Duke nukem 3d, Quake 1, 2, and 3, unreal, and the upcoming doom3. Jon has single handedly created the genre known as the first-person-shooter. He has also popularized the OpenGL 3d format over Microsoft's competing Direct3d format, as well as caused public interest in 3d cards when he first released accelerated quake for the s3 virge chipset. Jon carmack has redefined gaming on PC's.
Now stop for a moment and think, What would have happened if Albert Einstein had worked creating amazing pinball games instead of creating the theory of relativity? Humanity would suffer! Jon carmack is unfortunately doing JUST THIS, using his gifts at computer coding to create games instead of furthering the knowledge of humanity. Carmack could have been working for NASA or the US military, but instead he simply sits around coding violent computer games.
Is this a waste of a special and rare talent? Sadly, the answer is yes.
Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there. Not only is Jon carmack not contributing to society, he is causing it's downfall. What was the main reason for the mass murder of dozens of people in columbine? Doom. It's always the same story: Troubled youth plays doom or quake, he arms himself to the teeth, he kills his classmates. This has happened hundreds of times in the US alone. Carmack is not only wasting his talents and intelligence; he is single-handedly causing the deaths of many young men and women. How does he sleep at night?
Carmack is a classic example of a very talented and intelligent human being that is bent on total world destruction. Incredibly, he has made millions of dollars getting people hooked on psychotic games where they compete on the internet to see who can dismember the most people. I believe there is something morally wrong when millions of people have computerized murder fantasies, and we have Jon Carmack to thank. Carmack has used his superior intellect to create mayhem in society. Many people play games such as quake so much that their minds are permanently warped. A cousin of mine has been in therapy for 6 months after he lost a 'death match' and became catatonic.
It is unfortunate that most people do not realize how much this man has damaged all the things we have worked hard for in America. Jon has wasted his intelligence, caused the deaths of innocent children, and warped this country forever. To top it off, he got rich in the process and is revered by millions of computer users worldwide. Perhaps one day the US government will see the light and confine Jon Carmack somewhere with no computers so he can no longer use his intelligence to wreak havoc on society.
code a virus? yes
code spyware? I've done so in the past
send spam? yes
write a browser hijack? no
work for Claria/Gator? if they pay enough $$$
sell user information without consent? thats part of my present job
And I see some problems. Lets talk about Jon Carmack for instance. Jon is the legendary programmer of such classic PC games as Wolfenstein, Doom, Duke nukem 3d, Quake 1, 2, and 3, unreal, and the upcoming doom3. Jon has single handedly created the genre known as the first-person-shooter. He has also popularized the OpenGL 3d format over Microsoft's competing Direct3d format, as well as caused public interest in 3d cards when he first released accelerated quake for the s3 virge chipset. Jon carmack has redefined gaming on PC's.
Now stop for a moment and think, What would have happened if Albert Einstein had worked creating amazing pinball games instead of creating the theory of relativity? Humanity would suffer! Jon carmack is unfortunately doing JUST THIS, using his gifts at computer coding to create games instead of furthering the knowledge of humanity. Carmack could have been working for NASA or the US military, but instead he simply sits around coding violent computer games.
Is this a waste of a special and rare talent? Sadly, the answer is yes.
Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there. Not only is Jon carmack not contributing to society, he is causing it's downfall. What was the main reason for the mass murder of dozens of people in columbine? Doom. It's always the same story: Troubled youth plays doom or quake, he arms himself to the teeth, he kills his classmates. This has happened hundreds of times in the US alone. Carmack is not only wasting his talents and intelligence; he is single-handedly causing the deaths of many young men and women. How does he sleep at night?
Carmack is a classic example of a very talented and intelligent human being that is bent on total world destruction. Incredibly, he has made millions of dollars getting people hooked on psychotic games where they compete on the internet to see who can dismember the most people. I believe there is something morally wrong when millions of people have computerized murder fantasies, and we have Jon Carmack to thank. Carmack has used his superior intellect to create mayhem in society. Many people play games such as quake so much that their minds are permanently warped. A cousin of mine has been in therapy for 6 months after he lost a 'death match' and became catatonic.
It is unfortunate that most people do not realize how much this man has damaged all the things we have worked hard for in America. Jon has wasted his intelligence, caused the deaths of innocent children, and warped this country forever. To top it off, he got rich in the process and is revered by millions of computer users worldwide. Perhaps one day the US government will see the light and confine Jon Carmack somewhere with no computers so he can no longer use his intelligence to wreak havoc on society.
Lets talk about Jon Carmack. Jon is the legendary programmer of such classic PC games as Wolfenstein, Doom, Duke nukem 3d, Quake 1, 2, and 3, unreal, and the upcoming doom3. Jon has single handedly created the genre known as the first-person-shooter. He has also popularized the OpenGL 3d format over Microsoft's competing Direct3d format, as well as caused public interest in 3d cards when he first released accelerated quake for the s3 virge chipset. Jon carmack has redefined gaming on PC's.
Now stop for a moment and think, What would have happened if Albert Einstein had worked creating amazing pinball games instead of creating the theory of relativity? Humanity would suffer! Jon carmack is unfortunately doing JUST THIS, using his gifts at computer coding to create games instead of furthering the knowledge of humanity. Carmack could have been working for NASA or the US military, but instead he simply sits around coding violent computer games.
Is this a waste of a special and rare talent? Sadly, the answer is yes.
Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there. Not only is Jon carmack not contributing to society, he is causing it's downfall. What was the main reason for the mass murder of dozens of people in columbine? Doom. It's always the same story: Troubled youth plays doom or quake, he arms himself to the teeth, he kills his classmates. This has happened hundreds of times in the US alone. Carmack is not only wasting his talents and intelligence; he is single-handedly causing the deaths of many young men and women. How does he sleep at night?
Carmack is a classic example of a very talented and intelligent human being that is bent on total world destruction. Incredibly, he has made millions of dollars getting people hooked on psychotic games where they compete on the internet to see who can dismember the most people. I believe there is something morally wrong when millions of people have computerized murder fantasies, and we have Jon Carmack to thank. Carmack has used his superior intellect to create mayhem in society. Many people play games such as quake so much that their minds are permanently warped. A cousin of mine has been in therapy for 6 months after he lost a 'death match' and became catatonic.
It is unfortunate that most people do not realize how much this man has damaged all the things we have worked hard for in America. Jon has wasted his intelligence, caused the deaths of innocent children, and warped this country forever. To top it off, he got rich in the process and is revered by millions of computer users worldwide. Perhaps one day the US government will see the light and confine Jon Carmack somewhere with no computers so he can no longer use his intelligence to wreak havoc on society.
Hello,
Consulting for several large companies, I'd always done my work on
Windows. Recently however, a top online investment firm asked us to do
some work using Linux. The concept of having access to source code was
very appealing to us, as we'd be able to modify the kernel to meet our
exacting standards which we're unable to do with Microsoft's products.
Although we met several technical challenges along the way
(specifically, Linux's lack of Token Ring support and the fact that we
were unable to defrag its ext2 file system), all in all the process
went smoothly. Everyone was very pleased with Linux, and we were
considering using it for a great deal of future internal projects.
So you can imagine our suprise when we were informed by a lawyer that
we would be required to publish our source code for others to use. It
was brought to our attention that Linux is copyrighted under something
called the GPL, or the Gnu Protective License. Part of this license
states that any changes to the kernel are to be made freely available.
Unfortunately for us, this meant that the great deal of time and money
we spent "touching up" Linux to work for this investment firm would
now be available at no cost to our competitors.
Furthermore, after reviewing this GPL our lawyers advised us that any
products compiled with GPL'ed tools - such as gcc - would also have to
its source code released. This was simply unacceptable.
Although we had planned for no one outside of this company to ever
use, let alone see the source code, we were now put in a difficult
position. We could either give away our hard work, or come up with
another solution. Although it was tought to do, there really was no
option: We had to rewrite the code, from scratch, for Windows 2000.
I think the biggest thing keeping Linux from being truly competitive
with Microsoft is this GPL. Its draconian requirements virtually
guarentee that no business will ever be able to use it. After my
experience with Linux, I won't be recommending it to any of my
associates. I may reconsider if Linux switches its license to
something a little more fair, such as Microsoft's "Shared Source".
Until then its attempts to socialize the software market will insure
it remains only a bit player.
Thank you for your time.
The Linux community likes to hide behind the mantra of free and open
l
a sp
software for all and as such has the twisted mindset that all software
should be free for everyone. This should come as no surprise seeing
that the Linux community seems to take pride in stealing anything they
can get their hands on and breaking laws designed to protect IP at the
same time.
Linux users have been advocating downloading Microsoft True Type Fonts
for years mostly because their own fonts and font system in general
has been so horrific that Linux screen fonts in most stock installs
are almost unreadable. Of course they will claim that Linux fonts are
great but if that were really the case why is the internet clogged
with Linux Font DeUglification documents written by Linux users?
They even have documents that give a step by step procedure for
stealing the Microsoft fonts and installing them on Linux systems!
Notice in particular the instructions for the Tahoma font.
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/FDU/truetype.htm
http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/
Next we have Linux users violating the EULA for the X-Box and
tinkering with it so that it can run Linux.
Why on earth any sane person would want to take a bitching game
machine like X-box and ruin it by installing Linux is a mystery to me.
http://xbox-linux.sourceforge.net/index.php
http://xbox-linux.sourceforge.net/faq.php
Pay particular attention to the question about it being illegal and
how they avoid answering the question.
They are also doing the same thing with Sony Play station as well.
http://playstation2-linux.com/faq.php
None of this is going to hold up in a court of law and the Linux
people who are leading these projects are looking for some serious
trouble should Microsoft and Sony decide to pursue this matter.
Finally we have the suit filed by SCO which claims that the Linux
community at large has incorporated stolen code into it's open source
programs.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,936269,00.
This should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed the Linux
movement from the day Linux wrote the kernel.
The Linux community has proven themselves to be a fight to the end,
steal whatever can be stolen from big business because it is big
business that is killing Linux.
The Linux community has absolutely no respect for the property of
others and will resort to any type of clandestine tactics to steal
whatever isn't cemented down all in the good name of Linux.
So if you are thinking of betting your business on Linux software, you
had better think it over carefully, because if SCO should win, Linux
will be out of business.
And if SCO should lose, do you really think it is wise to bet your
entire business on software that is supported by a community that
promotes stealing and in fact is full of thieves?
Food for thought.
Hello,
Consulting for several large companies, I'd always done my work on
Windows. Recently however, a top online investment firm asked us to do
some work using Linux. The concept of having access to source code was
very appealing to us, as we'd be able to modify the kernel to meet our
exacting standards which we're unable to do with Microsoft's products.
Although we met several technical challenges along the way
(specifically, Linux's lack of Token Ring support and the fact that we
were unable to defrag its ext2 file system), all in all the process
went smoothly. Everyone was very pleased with Linux, and we were
considering using it for a great deal of future internal projects.
So you can imagine our suprise when we were informed by a lawyer that
we would be required to publish our source code for others to use. It
was brought to our attention that Linux is copyrighted under something
called the GPL, or the Gnu Protective License. Part of this license
states that any changes to the kernel are to be made freely available.
Unfortunately for us, this meant that the great deal of time and money
we spent "touching up" Linux to work for this investment firm would
now be available at no cost to our competitors.
Furthermore, after reviewing this GPL our lawyers advised us that any
products compiled with GPL'ed tools - such as gcc - would also have to
its source code released. This was simply unacceptable.
Although we had planned for no one outside of this company to ever
use, let alone see the source code, we were now put in a difficult
position. We could either give away our hard work, or come up with
another solution. Although it was tought to do, there really was no
option: We had to rewrite the code, from scratch, for Windows 2000.
I think the biggest thing keeping Linux from being truly competitive
with Microsoft is this GPL. Its draconian requirements virtually
guarentee that no business will ever be able to use it. After my
experience with Linux, I won't be recommending it to any of my
associates. I may reconsider if Linux switches its license to
something a little more fair, such as Microsoft's "Shared Source".
Until then its attempts to socialize the software market will insure
it remains only a bit player.
Thank you for your time.
Dear Friends,
We have an immidiate requirement for Sr. Software Engineer for our MNC
client from Banglore, INDIA.
Exp: 5 - 8 Years
Qual: B.E/B.Tech OR M.E/M.Tech
The person must have a knowledge of the following key skills.
- C and RISC programming
- Software Arch. and Design Experience
- Chip Debugging
- VxWorks
- pSoS
-Device Drivers
-ATM
-DSL
-System Debugging
Please forword your Latest Resume as word document attachment.
Thanks
Uday.
uday@eexcelsolutions.com
visit: www.eexcelsolutions.com
Please do convey your friends and pals who are looking for a better
opportunity in in INDIA.
My business faces ruin. CD sales have dropped through the floor. People aren't buying half as many CDs as they did just a year ago. Revenue is down and costs are up. My store has survived for years, but I now face the prospect of bankruptcy. Every day I ask myself why this is happening.
I bought the store about 12 years ago. It was one of those boutique record stores that sell obscure, independent releases that no-one listens to, not even the people that buy them. I decided that to grow the business I'd need to aim for a different demographic, the family market. My store specialised in family music - stuff that the whole family could listen to. I don't sell sick stuff like Marilyn Manson or cop-killer rap, and I'm proud to have one of the most extensive Christian rock sections that I know of.
The business strategy worked. People flocked to my store, knowing that they (and their children) could safely purchase records without profanity or violent lyrics. Over the years I expanded the business and took on more clean-cut and friendly employees. It took hard work and long hours but I had achieved my dream - owning a profitable business that I had built with my own hands, from the ground up. But now, this dream is turning into a nightmare.
Every day, fewer and fewer customers enter my store to buy fewer and fewer CDs. Why is no one buying CDs? Are people not interested in music? Do people prefer to watch TV, see films, read books? I don't know. But there is one, inescapable truth - Internet piracy is mostly to blame. The statistics speak for themselves - one in three discs world wide is a pirate. On The Internet, you can find and download hundreds of dollars worth of music in just minutes. It has the potential to destroy the music industry, from artists, to record companies to stores like my own. Before you point to the supposed "economic downturn", I'll note that the book store just across from my store is doing great business. Unlike CDs, it's harder to copy books over The Internet.
A week ago, an unpleasant experience with pirates gave me an idea. In my store, I overheard a teenage patron talking to his friend.
"Dude, I'm going to put this CD on the Internet right away."
"Yeah, dude, that's really lete [sic], you'll get lots of respect."
I was fuming. So they were out to destroy the record industry from right under my nose? Fat chance. When they came to the counter to make their purchase, I grabbed the little shit by his shirt. "So...you're going to copy this to your friends over The Internet, punk?" I asked him in my best Clint Eastwood/Dirty Harry voice.
"Uh y-yeh." He mumbled, shocked.
"That's it. What's your name? You're blacklisted. Now take yourself and your little bitch friend out of my store - and don't come back." I barked. Cravenly, they complied and scampered off.
So that's my idea - a national blacklist of pirates. If somebody cannot obey the basic rules of society, then they should be excluded from society. If pirates want to steal from the music industry, then the music industry should exclude them. It's that simple. One strike, and you're out - no reputable record store will allow you to buy another CD. If the pirates can't buy the CDS to begin with, then they won't be able to copy them over The Internet, will they? It's no different to doctors blacklisting drug dealers from buying prescription medicine.
I have just written a letter to the RIAA outlining my proposal. Suing pirates one by one isn't going far enough. Not to mention pirates use the fact that they're being sued to unfairly portray themselves as victims. A national register of pirates would make the problem far easier to deal with. People would be encouraged to give the names of suspected pirates to a hotline, similar to TIPS. Once we know the size of the problem, the police and other law enforcement agencies will be forced to take piracy seriously. They have fought the War on Drugs with skill, so why not the War on Piracy?
This evening, my
Lets talk about Jon Carmack. Jon is the legendary programmer of such classic PC games as Wolfenstein, Doom, Duke nukem 3d, Quake 1, 2, and 3, unreal, and the upcoming doom3. Jon has single handedly created the genre known as the first-person-shooter. He has also popularized the Direct3d 3d format over Microsoft's competing Opengl format, as well as caused public interest in 3d cards when he first released accelerated quake for the s3 virge chipset. Jon carmack has redefined gaming on PC's.
Now stop for a moment and think, What would have happened if Albert Einstein had worked creating amazing pinball games instead of creating the theory of relativity? Humanity would suffer! Jon carmack is unfortunately doing JUST THIS, using his gifts at computer coding to create games instead of furthering the knowledge of humanity. Carmack could have been working for NASA or the US military, but instead he simply sits around coding violent computer games.
Is this a waste of a special and rare talent? Sadly, the answer is yes.
Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there. Not only is Jon carmack not contributing to society, he is causing it's downfall. What was the main reason for the mass murder of dozens of people in columbine? Doom. It's always the same story: Troubled youth plays doom or quake, he arms himself to the teeth, he kills his classmates. This has happened hundreds of times in the US alone. Carmack is not only wasting his talents and intelligence; he is single-handedly causing the deaths of many young men and women. How does he sleep at night?
Carmack is a classic example of a very talented and intelligent human being that is bent on total world destruction. Incredibly, he has made millions of dollars getting people hooked on psychotic games where they compete on the internet to see who can dismember the most people. I believe there is something morally wrong when millions of people have computerized murder fantasies, and we have Jon Carmack to thank. Carmack has used his superior intellect to create mayhem in society. Many people play games such as quake so much that their minds are permanently warped. A cousin of mine has been in therapy for 6 months after he lost a 'death match' and became catatonic.
It is unfortunate that most people do not realize how much this man has damaged all the things we have worked hard for in America. Jon has wasted his intelligence, caused the deaths of innocent children, and warped this country forever. To top it off, he got rich in the process and is revered by millions of computer users worldwide. Perhaps one day the US government will see the light and confine Jon Carmack somewhere with no computers so he can no longer use his intelligence to wreak havoc on society.
I am seriously thinking about trying BSD. Can the BSD user please direct me to a list of pros/cons? Can I run linux programs?
I win, I win!
PS Simoniker, whatever happened to Michael?
AKA a nazi fanatic loser.
....
...etc.
1. You rejuvenate and dance when you hear a windows flaw exposed, but you conveniently ignore the thousands of security flaws exposed in linux.
2. You yell loudly TROLL! at any person's post or at any person you see posting facts that you do not want to hear about your oh so cool linux.
3. You know it's a classic case of penis envy, you don't have all the support, software and hardware available for linux and you have to let that anger out somewhere, but you don't have the brains to admit it.
4. You hate windows, hate Microsoft, but race to emulate windows, have programs to run office from within linux, and spend a $300 on a Windows emulator, only Windows fools.
5. You cannot admit that you don't have professional usage of Linux outside server markets.
6. You cannot admit that most of the joe user out there when told that there is linux will respond, what is that?
7. You cannot admit that there is no professional printing capabilities in linux.
8. You cannot admit that you are a masochist (otherwise why would someone spend hours playing with scripts,
and recompiling programs that are available for Windows?)
9. You cannot admit that there is no professional desktop publishing done on Linux.
10. You cannot admit that no one in their right mind would do professional video editing in Linux.
11. You cannot admit that linux sucks when it comes for gaming/home entertainment or education.
12. You have problems in understanding Windows, and you will blame your own incompetence on Microsoft.
13. You have problems in pointing a clicking, but have no problems in wading through cryptic scripts written by lunatics.
14. Nothing will get past that shit that fills your head, you will not admit to any facts.
15. You can't admit that naming of linux components, packages, and others are weird and fits profiles of troubled teenagers. gentoo, lgx, rpm
16. You feel angered because you were left out by microsoft's Media technologies, they support Mac, Sun sparc, but not linux.
17. You feel inferior deep inside but unable to admit it, you don't have a database as easy and powerful as Access.
18. You cannot tell that not a single office package outside Microsoft's is worth looking at or bothering with.
19. You don't know that your CD recorder software sucks.
20. You don't have DVD-RAM, DVD-R, DVD-RW support in your pathetic OS.
21. While the rest of the world moves on, you're stuck in a stone age technology that needs third party software to boot into GUI.
22. You act out of prejudice, you kill file domains and users of specific news readers while you ignore the bullshit that your fellow linux losers post.
23. You don't know commercial support in Linux is almost non existent.
24. You miss the fact that companies are leaving linux because of the chaos, and the cheap linux losers who are unwilling to pay and support hard work, Corel, gaming companies,...etc.
25. You are unaware that linux has no terminal services (there is a lame one that no one uses), and commercial support for it is not happening.
26. You are unaware that setting up servers on Windows takes couple of minutes while on linux, good luck playing with configuration scripts.
27. You cannot admit that support for USB on linux is laughable at best.
28. You think that Linux is better because slashdot told you so.
29. You spend countless hours flaming people because they post their opinions about your oh so cool linux and your attitude, instead of researching things for yourself and understanding fact in order not to look this stupid.
30. You think that anyone who uses linux has a clue.
31. You think that linux cannot crash.
32. You think that everyone is interested in your conspiracy theories about Microsoft (or should i say M$ in order for you, teenagers to understand?), and how they destroyed linux,
33. You keep ignoring the fact that thousands of linux servers get hacked every year, but it takes one Windows server hacked to get you and your fellow linux idiots to dance and celebrate.
don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you cat fanatics? I've been sitting here on my sofa in front of a cat (a sealpoint siamese) for about 20 minutes now while attempting to get it's attention away from a bug on the floor. 20 minutes. At home, with my labrador cross, which by all standards should be a lot dumber than this cat, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this attention seeking attempt, my children's attention is also held by the cat. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even trying to get the remote from my partner fails.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while dealing with other cats, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a cat that fetches as much as it's canine counterpart, despite the cat's faster ambulatory system. My terrier with one ingrown toenail runs consistently faster than this siamese at times, as the cat is often completely asleep. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the cat is a superior animal.
Cat addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a cat over other faster, cheaper, more affectionate animals.
Just went to Matrix Revolutions. Good movie.
It opens with Trinity attacking a yet unknown location. All of a sudden, she jumps off the building (this is shown is the trailer) and is being pursued by an Agent. She gets shot. Neo wakes up and realizes it was a dream. He gets out of bed (Trinity is with him) and goes into the other room. They try to talk but he says nothing. Cut to next scene of Morpheous and other captains talking inside the Matrix. Interestingly, we learn that Morpheous is not really a big shot leader but rather just another peon in the world of Zion/Matrix who does not have the support of his fellow captains. There is a knock at the door. It is Agent Smith with something for Neo. It is his ear piece since he is no longer a part of the matrix but rather a lose program.
Agent Smith pulls up in a black Audi A8 (didn't see the rims so it might have been an S8--I'm an Audi nut =). Anyway, Agent Smith comes to the door and knocks on it hard. It is one of those metal doors with a sliding eye piece. The eye piece opens and then one of the two people (don't know exactly who they are, but they are freed people) and they get the envelope from Agent Smith. They call Neo up and give him the envelope which has the earpiece in it. The next knock from the door ha everyone assuming its Agent Smith, but its not. Its the other Agent (can't remember the name, either Thompson or Johnson) who are on the other side. Neo tells the others to scram and the fight starts. Apparently the Agents (2 or more, can't remember now) block Neo's bunch and Neo says "upgraded units". Fight continues. No idea where Agent Smith went. Fight scene ensues with real Agents who have found the location.
There is an arugment and the ship pulls into Zion. Machines are boring down we learn. Learn the commanders woman used to be morpheous woman who is a captain.
Morpheous speaks to people. Big party/orgy scene. Trinity and Neo have sex. Afterwards, the counselor talks to Neo.
Cut to scene of the glowing asian guy protecting the Oracle. They have a fight scene on the table. The asian guy is another one of these lose programs in the matrix.
Oracle talks to Neo about choices (more specifically about his choice to possibly let Trinity die--you should recall the first scene in the movie) and tells him about the Keymaker and "the source".
She leaves. Agents come. Agent Smith multiplies and a huge playground fight starts (shown in trailer). Agent smith is replicating himself somehow but putting his hand inside any person in the matrix and taking them over. He tries with Neo, but can't do it. Neo then leaves but flying (superman style) after the fight.
They go to find the keymaker at the French-wannabe information seller (The Merovingian) who is also a Matrix programmer. See Monica Belluchi as his wife (Persephone). For those who are kinky, The Merovingian programs this piece of cake to cause on of the people in his party to have an orgasmic experience. What is funny is the way they switch to the matrix style screen and up between her legs and show an explosin in that special area. =)
So the Merovingian turned down the request of Morpheous, Neo and Trinity to turn over the keymaker. Persephone was being belittled by her husband (Merovingian) and she seemed agitated. Morpheous, Neo and Trinity get into the elevator to leave. When they get to the ground floor, Persephone is waiting for them. She goes to the bathroom and then the entire kissing passionately scene comes up that I talked about before (Persephone wants Neo to kiss her like he kisses Trinity before she turns over the Keymaker). So She does and they end up in the house with the two staircases where the later fight scene happens and Persephone goes to a back room. The back room has two guys in it (don't know there names). She shoots one with her gun and tells the other to run to her husband to tell him what she has done. They then go and retrieve the keymaker from behind a small door. They find those weird white guys (The T
Spammers are misunderstood. If I see something interesting in a spam, it's a service - I may even buy it. If it is useless, I delete it (it takes all of 2 seconds). Whats the problem?
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Hi,
:)
I've always used Windowz and I consider myself an exceptional Visual
Basic programmer, so I know computers pretty good. In fact I got an A-
in my programming class last term. But I'm a little wary of how much
power Microsoft has in the computer field. Many of my friends use
RedHat and I've recently installed it on my machine at home. Although
I haven't had as much chance to play with it as I'd like, I've been
greatly impressed.
This weekend I gave some thoughts to the things that are wrong with
Linux. I hope no one minds having some flaws pointed out. I'd like to
help make RedHat stronger so it can conquer MS. Hopefully RedHat will
hear this (crossing fingers) and address these. I think with a little
effort, RedHat's Linux can defeat Microsoft's Windows!
To begin with, there are too many different flavors of RedHat.
Browsing a list on Amazon, I saw they made varients under the
codenames of Mandrake, Debian and Slackware, just to name a few. I
know that I'm very new to RedHat so maybe this is obvious but it seems
like RedHat should just sell a few different flavors of its operating
system. Perhaps one for the desktop and one for a server? Could
someone explain why RedHat produces dozens of different versions of
Linux?
Secondly did you know that anyone can view the source code to Linux! I
think that RedHat shouldn't make its code available. After all, what
keeps Microsoft from stealing RedHat's ideas and putting it into
Windows? My friend says that FreeBSD stole the TCP/IP stack from DOS a
long time ago and Microsoft is always looking for revenge for that.
Plus it seems to me like RedHat is just giving away its ideas for
free. And what keeps hackers or terrorists from tampering with the
code and putting a virus in every computer?
On a related note, why doesn't RedHat write Linux in assembly? My
friend says that's what Microsoft does for Windows, and that's why
Windows is faster and more stable than Linux.
Next RedHat definitely should kill -9 (ha, ha!) the command line.
Microsoft finally gave up DOS when Windows 2000 came out. I'm suprised
that RedHat hasn't migrated away from...whatever its version of DOS is
called (Bash, I think?) But maybe this is planned for a future
release?
Finally Linux needs games! RedHat will never be successful in the home
without games. They should also tell M$ to release a version of Office
for Linux too. And Internet Explorer!
Have a nice day! Go Linux!!
I'm concerned about the narrowm view of the world IT people and engineers
,
have these days. I think the problem starts at college -
There's a culture that somehow science is more rational and usefull
then the humanitities. Lecturers encourage students to joke about arts
students, and humilaite them whenever possible. This encourages
eliteism, and I for one am sick of it.
Let's tell it like it is. 'science' is just as much about opinion as
the humanities. Research simply follows the fad of the day. Take
dieticians for example. These men and woman believe that just because
they have degree in medical science that they are all knowing. Why,
what they recommend one day may kill you the next! (see the DDT story
for more information.) Science is 95% opinion then facts, lets face
it. What about astrology, the most rediculious of the sciences! But I
degress...
Another example is music. We know what sounds good. Everyone aggreed
that Valves for instance sound great. But knowitall engineers use
trensastors with inferious sound quality just to save a few bucks.
They argue with numbers. Hey, I don't want to do maths just to listen
to music. I know what I like. You cannot apply objective reasoning to
a subject which is intristically subjective. But try telling those
recent grads with their useless piece of paper that and they go all
mightier--then-thou.
The problem with you technical guys are that you are all so eliteist.
Whilst you want to trun collage into a trade school with yore narrow
minded views that collage should be a job training centre, humanities
are focused on making you a well rounded person who is auctually
interesting to be with, not a boring focuesed geek. Really, it makes
me so mad when people say "oh, he's doing a humanities degree, that's
easy". I have to read *3* *books* *a* *week* on average. Not picture
books either I assue you. It is a lot of work, but the upshot is
improved grammer and spelling skills that are lacking in the
technical. As for those that say "you will be working at mcdonalds"
I'm going on to so a PhD in socialolgy where I'll be line for tenure
where I have a much more rewarding job then beeing a science freak or
an engineer. Anyways, all I have to do to be a engineer wold be to get
my MSCE and how hard couyld that be? techincal stuff is simply
whatever fad the market thinks is hot at the moment, but all great
things were done by humanities.
You technical types are far to narrow minded and cynsical. You should
learn to enjoy life.
Peace be to god, he transcends all.
My business faces ruin. CD sales have dropped through the floor. People aren't buying half as many CDs as they did just a year ago. Revenue is down and costs are up. My store has survived for years, but I now face the prospect of bankruptcy. Every day I ask myself why this is happening.
I bought the store about 12 years ago. It was one of those boutique record stores that sell obscure, independent releases that no-one listens to, not even the people that buy them. I decided that to grow the business I'd need to aim for a different demographic, the family market. My store specialised in family music - stuff that the whole family could listen to. I don't sell sick stuff like Marilyn Manson or cop-killer rap, and I'm proud to have one of the most extensive Christian rock sections that I know of.
The business strategy worked. People flocked to my store, knowing that they (and their children) could safely purchase records without profanity or violent lyrics. Over the years I expanded the business and took on more clean-cut and friendly employees. It took hard work and long hours but I had achieved my dream - owning a profitable business that I had built with my own hands, from the ground up. But now, this dream is turning into a nightmare.
Every day, fewer and fewer customers enter my store to buy fewer and fewer CDs. Why is no one buying CDs? Are people not interested in music? Do people prefer to watch TV, see films, read books? I don't know. But there is one, inescapable truth - Internet piracy is mostly to blame. The statistics speak for themselves - one in three discs world wide is a pirate. On The Internet, you can find and download hundreds of dollars worth of music in just minutes. It has the potential to destroy the music industry, from artists, to record companies to stores like my own. Before you point to the supposed "economic downturn", I'll note that the book store just across from my store is doing great business. Unlike CDs, it's harder to copy books over The Internet.
A week ago, an unpleasant experience with pirates gave me an idea. In my store, I overheard a teenage patron talking to his friend.
"Dude, I'm going to put this CD on the Internet right away."
"Yeah, dude, that's really lete [sic], you'll get lots of respect."
I was fuming. So they were out to destroy the record industry from right under my nose? Fat chance. When they came to the counter to make their purchase, I grabbed the little shit by his shirt. "So...you're going to copy this to your friends over The Internet, punk?" I asked him in my best Clint Eastwood/Dirty Harry voice.
"Uh y-yeh." He mumbled, shocked.
"That's it. What's your name? You're blacklisted. Now take yourself and your little bitch friend out of my store - and don't come back." I barked. Cravenly, they complied and scampered off.
So that's my idea - a national blacklist of pirates. If somebody cannot obey the basic rules of society, then they should be excluded from society. If pirates want to steal from the music industry, then the music industry should exclude them. It's that simple. One strike, and you're out - no reputable record store will allow you to buy another CD. If the pirates can't buy the CDS to begin with, then they won't be able to copy them over The Internet, will they? It's no different to doctors blacklisting drug dealers from buying prescription medicine.
I have just written a letter to the RIAA outlining my proposal. Suing pirates one by one isn't going far enough. Not to mention pirates use the fact that they're being sued to unfairly portray themselves as victims. A national register of pirates would make the problem far easier to deal with. People would be encouraged to give the names of suspected pirates to a hotline, similar to TIPS. Once we know the size of the problem, the police and other law enforcement agencies will be forced to take piracy seriously. They have fought the War on Drugs with skill, so why not the War on Piracy?
This evening, my daughters a
I work as a consultant for several fortune 500 companies, and I think
I can shed a little light on the climate of the open source community
at the moment. I believe that part of the reason that open source
based startups are failing left and right is not an issue of marketing
as it's commonly believed but more of an issue of the underlying
technology.
I know that that's a strong statement to make, but I have evidence to
back it up! At one of the major corps(5000+ employees) that I consult
for, we wanted to integrate the shareware version of Linux into our
server pool. The allure of not having to pay any restrictive licensing
fees was too great to ignore. I reccomended the installation of
several boxes running the new 2.4.9 kernel, and my hopes were high
that it would perform up to snuff with the Windows 2k boxes which
were(and still are!) doing an AMAZING job at their respective tasks of
serving HTTP requests, DNS, and fileserving.
I consider myself to be very technically inclined having programmed in
VB for the last 8 years doing kernel level programming. I don't
believe in C programming because contrary to popular belief, VB can go
just as low level as C and the newest VB compiler generates code
that's every bit as fast. I took it upon myself to configure the
system from scratch and even used an optimised version of gcc 3.1 to
increase the execution speed of the binaries. I integrated the 3
machines I had configured into the server pool, and I'd have to say
the results were less than impressive... We all know that linux isn't
even close to being ready for the desktop, but I had heard that it was
supposed to perform decently as a "server" based operating system. The
3 machines all went into swap immediately, and it was obvious that
they weren't going to be able to handle the load in this "enterprise"
environment. After running for less than 24 hours, 2 of them had
experienced kernel panics caused by Bind and Apache crashing! Granted,
Apache is a volunteer based project written by weekend hackers in
their spare time while Microsft's IIS has an actual professional full
fledged development team devoted to it. Not to mention the fact that
the Linux kernel itself lacks any support for any type of journaled
filesystem, memory protection, SMP support, etc, but I thought that
since Linux is based on such "old" technology that it would run with
some level of stability. After several days of this type of behaviour,
we decided to reinstall windows 2k on the boxes to make sure it wasn't
a hardware problem that was causing things to go wrong. The machines
instantly shaped up and were seamlessly reintegrated into the server
pool with just one Win2K machine doing more work than all 3 of the
Linux boxes.
Needless to say, I won't be reccomending Linux/FSF to anymore of my
clients. I'm dissappointed that they won't be able to leverege the
free cost of Linux to their advantage, but in this case I suppose the
old adage stands true that, "you get what you pay for." I would have
also liked to have access to the source code of the applications that
we're running on our mission critical systems; however, from the looks
of it, the Microsoft "shared source" program seems to offer all of the
same freedoms as the GPL.
As things stand now, I can understand using Linux in academia to
compile simple "Hello World" style programs and learn C programming,
but I'm afraid that for anything more than a hobby OS, Windows
98/NT/2K are your only choices.
umm, it was slashdotted in the 'mysterous future'. Maybe it worked for you - good on you. But it *crawled* for me.
The yeast and the cockroach -- a spy tale
One infiltrates, the other collects data
By SUE VORENBERG
SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
Meet the future of biological and chemical espionage: yeast and cockroaches.
Odd as the combination sounds, it could be the building block of a new, inexpensive spy device -- one that could sneak into a building and sense chemicals or biological agents, said Jeff Brinker, a Sandia National Laboratories scientist and professor at the University of New Mexico.
"Cockroaches are robust -- they can go into environments that humans can't withstand," Brinker said. "You could attach a sensing device onto the back of a cockroach and send it into a place where you suspect they're making chemical weapons.
"If you can go in covertly, you can collect evidence without anyone getting spooked."
Who needs the CIA when you've got cockroaches? As for the sensing device, Brinker said, that would be made of yeast.
"Yeast functions like a canary in a coal mine," said Helen Baca, a doctoral student working with Brinker. "If yeast cells are exposed to dangerous chemicals, they change and die. You can actually genetically modify yeast cells so when something specific happens to them, they change color."
Brinker and Baca are creating genetically modified yeast cells that can stay alive for days attached to the back of a cockroach -- or a cockroach-sized robot.
"Inside each yeast cell is a marker that turns green if it is exposed to a particular chemical," Brinker said. "They have optical radar where you can shoot a beam at the cockroach, and if a chemical triggered any of the yeast cells, it would be able to see the green fluorescent marker."
Keeping the yeast sensors alive isn't all that easy. The cells need a constant supply of water and nutrients, which is hard to supply on the back of a cockroach.
So the scientists decided to encase the cells in Sol-Gel, an insulation material that Brinker has modified and improved since he came to Sandia Labs in 1979.
"The Sol-Gel creates an environment like a tiny reservoir that can store an influx of nutrients," he said. "It maintains the hydrated environment, and to our surprise we found the yeast actually seems to develop a symbiotic relationship with the host material."
In other words, the yeast appears to eat a portion of the Sol-Gel, and the Sol-Gel keeps the yeast alive.
"We've had it survive for three days that way," Baca said. "It looks like there's the potential for them to last a lot longer than that."
And she means longer as in hundreds of years. That's because yeast becomes dormant when it is deprived of water and nutrients.
While it couldn't be used as a sensor in its dormant state, a quick drop of nutrients could suddenly bring the yeast back to life for its next mission, Brinker said.
"These yeast sensors can be applied to things by all kinds of interesting techniques," he said. "We've created an ink jet cartridge for a printer that can print out arrays of yeast in Sol-Gel droplets."
A printed page of yeast sensors could be taped or glued to the back of a cockroach or robot. It might even be used in unusual medical devices.
Say the yeast is engineered to detect human disease. Then a doctor could print up a yeast card, have a patient breathe on it and determine what illness the person has, Brinker said.
What is SB213/HB457?
SB213/HB457 is the Tennessee version of the "Super-DMCA" bill, which is backed by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Proposed in the Tennessee General Assembly in the 2003 session, versions of this bill have already been passed in eight states (and counting). This legislation negatively impacts citizens' freedom of speech, access to secure communications, and use of many networking technologies. It gives Internet service providers (ISP's) unprecedented control over what types of devices and software citizens can use while connected to the Internet, and gives them power to sue users for thousands of dollars per day if they infringe on that control in any way. This legislation tries to ensure that citizens have far fewer freedoms in their electronic interactions; as the Internet and pervasive computing becomes more a part of our lives, this will translate into control by a few corporations over almost everything that you do electronically.
Why should it matter to me?
Do you have more than one computer? Do you use Linux? Do you use any kind of Internet security hardware or software (called a "firewall"), or does your company use networking equipment to share Internet access using network address translation (NAT), or allow employees to connect from home using a virtual private network (VPN)? Do you cryptographically sign or encrypt your email? SDMCA-based legislation threatens your access to all of these. And if you don't understand some of these terms, you may already be using these technologies and simply be unaware of it. That's unimportant, though, because you can still go to jail for it.
This legislation was presented to Tennessee legislators in 2003 as a "theft of service" bill, designed simply to "update state law so that it comprehensively protects new broadband communication services from piracy and sabotage." In reality, it is much broader and more insidious. The Tennessee bill (HB457) as originally submitted would have made even minor violations of your service contract a Class-D felony, and allowed fines of $1,500 to $10,000, per device or software program, per day, on those found in violation. Compliance would cost Tennessee businesses a bundle as well; businesses planning to move to Tennessee would be less likely to do so.
"It is not a cable theft bill. It is a comprehensive broadband/Internet telecommunications bill."
-- Geoffrey Beauchamp, chief lobbyist for SB213/HB457
You Can Help!
Get informed, get educated, get involved, get organized, get effective. Read all you can about the bills. Read good analyses by people whose motives agree with yours. Write thoughtful and intelligent letters and emails to your representatives. Call them and tell him how you feel and why. Connect with other people who feel the same way that you (and we) do, and help us build a campaign to bring about change for the betterment of Tennessee.
The Tennessee General Assembly is out of session until 2004, and summer study will likely not start until the fall. You can stay current, and help us stay current as well, through our online forums. Keep up with our activities, and stay alert for important news and information that we may have missed. If you have a web page, you can add one of our link banners to your site. Please do what you can to help us get the word out about this dangerous legislation!