They knew when they wrote it that it wasn't perfect. That is why they made it possible to amend it. If something is so important and universally agreed on that it should be implemented but isn't within the powers of the federal government.....amend the constitution.
Actually I think its quite good concidering how they are doing all of it without looking at the windows source code. The linux NTFS driver is in a similar camp (implementing without access to the closed source).
I don't know how true this is, but there is another reason that vendors may not release hardware info.
I have heard that a lot of hardware is pretty bad and is mostly fixed with software hacks in the driver. Companies may be not want people to know how broken some of their products are.
The tv/movie industry is facing the same problem that the music industry has faced/is facing. They see that thier stranglehold on distribution is in trouble. If it got to the point where people could download any syndicated show from the people who make it for a small fee, then companies like Time/Warner/AOL/etc. couldn't sell their air time for profit. Companies that base their business on being middle men are never going to be for a way to do business without them.
I have been working from home as a sysadmin/programmer for a small local company since my son was 6 weeks old. My wife works away from home full time, so I am the primary caregiver. I have strange hours. I usually do my coding/system updates from midnight to 8 am or so, then I watch and play with my son till by wife gets home at around 6 pm. During the day, while I am watching my son, I keep the phone open for any "emergency" situations that come up at the main office. I go to bed early around 8pm or so. I don't require more than 4 hours of sleep, so it works out good.
It's not easy, but it can be done. Plus, I am having the time of my life raising my son, who is now 15 months old. It is such a joy to watch him develop his own personality.
Best of luck to you. You will enjoy being a dad.
First IANAP (I Am Not A Plumber). The valve that is between the wall and the toilet was leaking on my toilet and this is how I fixed it:
1. Went to the hardware store and bought a new valve.
2. I shut the water off to the house at the main valve (this was in the basement at my house).
3. I relieved the water pressure in the house by running a faucet.
4. I used a creacent (sp?) wrench to loosen the couplings on either side of my bad toiled valve. Then removed the old valve.
5. I wrapped the threads on each side of the new valve with teflon (sp?) tape.
6. I reinstalled the new valve and tightened the couplings.
7. I turned back on the water at the main valve to the house. I had my wife stand by the toilet to yell if it was spurting water during this stage incase I didn't get the toilet valve tight enough.
8. I opened the toilet valve a little bit at a time to get the toilet to fill up at a decent rate, but not gushing out. I did this a little bit at a time, flushing to check.
Total cost was under $20 for the teflon tape and the new valve. It may or may not be the correct way to fix it, but it was cheap and it worked. The toilet valve has been leak free for over a year. Hope this helps.
He may not be the best actor, but I always thought he did ok in Star Trek. He seems like a duck out of water in anything else. I'm sure he would want his retiring role to be Star Trek instead of commercials....now if they could only get Nimoy.
I'm in Illinois as well. When I was a teenager, I bought a used car from an out of state person. When I did the title transfer at the DMV, they asked me how much I paid for the vehicle for the tax. They added what ever tax was on to the Illinois title transfer fee.
I'm pretty sure that the extra money I paid at the DMV went to the appropriate tax authorities. I never heard another word from the state except when I received my Illinois car title in the mail.
Granted this wasn't in Chicago, but in central Illinois. But, I'm surprised that all the taxes weren't taken care of when you did the title transfer.
Windows 2000 & XP don't crash. I've been using it for years, and it's rock-solid. I rebooted my machine for the first time in a couple of months today (my work PC). All the old "wind0ze crashes!" stuff ceased to be factual when Windows 2000 appeared.
If by rock-solid you mean it doesn't crash as much then I agree. Windows 2000+ is much better than Microsoft's previous attempts at OSes. I have had Windows 2000 crash on me though from a buggy driver. This crash brought down the whole system btw. Most crashes in Unix like OSes do not bring down the whole system.
Plus, for a server, Windows still needs to be rebooted way too often. The only time you have to reboot Linux is for a kernel update. It seems like just about every update requires a reboot with Windows.
To my knowledge, this need to reboot Windows for most updates is due to overall design issues with the OS itself. Hopefully, Microsoft will address this with Longhorn. As you can see, there is some mud that will stick to Longhorn, but you can stick some mud on just about any OS.
I think either you misunderstood me or I misunderstand you. I am not saying to get rid of Social Security Disability. There are many people that are collecting it for legitimate reasons (ie. really are disabled). What my beef is the people who are NOT disabled but fake being disabled to collect benefits instead of working.
I have no problem at all with helping people that are really disabled with Social Security. I do have a problem with people that are perfectly capable to work, but instead choose to take money from my retirement AND people who truly are in need of Social Security Disability.
There is a huge difference between people who really are disabled and those who are using the system as a free lunch.
Firstly, we can turn off all SS's "welfare" provisions (i.e. stuff like paying benefits to non-retirees). Then we can start removing 18yr-olds from the system... they don't pay in, and can't participate.
You mean you want to revise the ~1996 Welfare reform? For those of you who don't know, the reason that there are less Welfare recipients now than pre-Welfare reform is NOT because there are less people on "welfare", but they have been moved to the Social Security system. Mainly the disability part of Social Security.
When the dot-com bubble crashed I worked a bit at a high-risk loan office. I quit for ethical reasons that I briefly will explain here. I saw first hand how our Social Security system is being used. People (loan applicants) would very plainly tell how they went from welfare to disability by getting jobs then faking injuries to start collecting. Some even went as far as offering to re-roof or paint my house as long as I paid them in cash so they wouldn't get caught by the Social Security Administration.
This is why I laugh everytime I hear Democrats tout the 1996 welfare reform as a good thing. All it did was make it that much more unlikely that the money I pour into Social Security will actually benifit me when I retire.
I could tell stories that would make your stomach ache everytime you saw money going to Social Security from your paycheck. For example: A mother telling her child that if he wants some $50 tennis shoes that he needs to "play dumb" in school. That will allow "mommy" to get disability money for ya. Never mind this child will get poor grades and probably drop out of school and be another on the Social Security gravytrain.
Our money isn't being burned up grandma's and people that have retired after working 30+ years in a factory. It is being burned up, for the most part, by people who found a way to still earn income even though they DON'T WANT TO WORK.
I think you are half right. The problem isn't that the Republicans are elite and looked at as "for the people" with the Democrates "for the people" and looked at as elite. The problem is both parties are overflowing with "golden boys" and very much influenced by special interests (Republicans by corporations and Democrats by labor and lawyers). Neither party seems to be looking out for the little guy.
The REAL problem is we have a two party system and neither party is for us (the average american). Not only that, but most voters feel that they throw their vote away if they vote for anyone other than a Rep or Dem! Which is true as long as people feel that way. We have been sheepherded by the two parties in this country to keep them in power.
I couldn't agree more. I totally disagree with the idea that some killer game is going to make Linux the OS of choice for millions. MS OSs didn't get where they are today because of a killer game. They got there because that is what mom/dad used at work and that is what mom/dad bought for home(early years...today there isn't much choice). I don't know about everyone else, but I sure as hell wouldn't buy my son a $1000 machine just to play a game on. The home computer market will move to Linux when the business computer market moves to Linux.
Look at the Amiga as an example. The Amiga was a kick ass computer for its time (and had tons of killer games), but people were buying IBM clones because that is what they knew from/needed for work. Commodore tried to get into the business world too late and died (well that and other piss poor decisions).
Getting a patent and enforcing a patent are two very different things. Like you said, it seems you could patent anything with the current state of the US patent system. Having that patent tried, upheld, and enforced in court is another matter. Any competent company knows that and is not going to waste money on getting un-enforceable patents.
I think they are delaying not due to stealing OSS software ideas, but honestly trying to make their software better. For the first time in many years MS has real competition. They can't release another insecure trashbag OS or database server. If they release before it is actually ready, then they will get tons of bad press and their lunch ate by OSS software.
Lets just hope OSS developers don't sit on their laurels during these delays. If they do they will be playing major catch up come 2005/2006. This is the time for OSS to take the lead. The boys at Redmond may be evil, but they are no fools.
Too bad Linus doesn't release a distro, so we'd know what Linux is supposed to look like.
If I'm not mistaken Linus has said he won't endorse or release a distro for that reason alone. Friendly competition between the distros is a good thing. It sparks invention and true innovation. Even the various *BSDs help each other out.
If you sit down at a Linux system you have no idea what you're going to find.
I disagree there. Most *nixes are fairly similar. You have a/dev directory. You have an init process. You have standard utilities such as ls, cp, grep, sed, awk, etc. I have used AIX, Solaris, FreeBSD, and Linux and they do have their differences, but they are more alike than different.
From a Systems Administration standpoint alone that makes *BSD a better choice for corporations with a large number of hosts, but Linux gets all the press.
I disagree there as well. I feel that from an administration standpoint with a large number of hosts it wouldn't matter if you were using RedHat, Gentoo, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, or any other *nix for that matter as long as the machines you were running were using the same distro. No, you wouldn't want 10 RedHat boxes, 20 OpenBSD boxes, 35 Gentoo boxes, and 15 AIX boxes. On the other hand, if you had 80 Gentoo boxes that were all kept up to date you wouldn't be any worse off than if you had 80 FreeBSD boxes (generally speaking, I know each OS has its strengths and weaknesses).
IMO the best OS to administer is the OS you know. You could have the best/most secure OS ever, but you would still get owned if you didn't know how to administer it. Hell, even the "security hole haven" Windows can be made more or less secure by a good admin.
Didn't they just get more wiretapping power a few years ago with the patriot act? It seems they won't be satisfied till everyone has a microphone and transmitter strapped to them just incase they might, on the off chance, be planning a crime.
Its a sad situation in any country when the government feels that this is something they need to inflict upon its citizens. Its even more sad when the citizens let them.
Offshoring will never stop if you support the companies that do it. These companies would NOT want to give up the American consumer market for any reason. So if you want them to stop offshoring, stop buying products from companies that offshore. If the government won't do anything to help the American worker. Then the American public needs to do it themselves.
I'm not an economist, but that seems logical to me.
The reverse is true as well. It is much easier for me to edit a few config files than to wade through a GUI to configure options or tinker with the windows registry(ack).
Not to mention a total lack of perl or a good scripting shell on windows. I depend on scripts to help wade through log files and such.
Xenix was developed by Microsoft. (old)SCO then built a business around selling the once Microsoft product. I think there was a deal between (old)SCO and MS that MS would not compete against Xenix with another Unix OS.
This agreement is probably still in place with the new SCO due to the new SCO getting a lot of the assets of the old SCO.
Tinfoil time: This whole thing could be a ploy by Microsoft to end the SCO Unix agreement by folding SCO. They more than likely would not be able to buy them due to anti-trust. With the agreement gone they could sell a Unix based OS to compete against Linux/other Unixes. Plus, they can try to damage other Unix/Linux businesses in the process.
That is all speculation. I am not at all even sure that agreement still exists. I'm sure someone on here more knowledgeable about (old)SCO Xenix development can correct me if I'm off base.
It has been long speculated on here that Microsoft was bankrolling SCO. Now with proof, lets hope that this MS/SCO FUD about the Linux source is seen for what it is by the corporations and most of all the courts.
I was looking forward to a flood of game ports to Linux. I guess one more is better than no more. Why companies don't release executables for Linux (like Id for quake(1-3) and Bioware for NWN)? Most of the games today are datafiles anyway (ie. pictures and sound that would work on any platform). Are game companies so locked in to using Microsoft's APIs like DirectX that they can't program a game to be portable anymore?
Electronic arts probably pisses me off the most as they make a few changes to Id's engines (MOHAA) and neglect to release binaries for Linux. Yes, I am aware of the port on icculus.org, but EA could have done a port of MOHAA long ago.
Not even the flight simulator. MS Flight Simulator as it is today was originally developed by Bruce Artwick Organization (BAO). It was later bought by MS. I'm not real knowlegable on the whole deal, but I remembered that buyout. I'm sure someone else here knows the whole history.
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They knew when they wrote it that it wasn't perfect. That is why they made it possible to amend it. If something is so important and universally agreed on that it should be implemented but isn't within the powers of the federal government.....amend the constitution.
Actually I think its quite good concidering how they are doing all of it without looking at the windows source code. The linux NTFS driver is in a similar camp (implementing without access to the closed source).
I don't know how true this is, but there is another reason that vendors may not release hardware info.
I have heard that a lot of hardware is pretty bad and is mostly fixed with software hacks in the driver. Companies may be not want people to know how broken some of their products are.
The tv/movie industry is facing the same problem that the music industry has faced/is facing. They see that thier stranglehold on distribution is in trouble. If it got to the point where people could download any syndicated show from the people who make it for a small fee, then companies like Time/Warner/AOL/etc. couldn't sell their air time for profit. Companies that base their business on being middle men are never going to be for a way to do business without them.
I have been working from home as a sysadmin/programmer for a small local company since my son was 6 weeks old. My wife works away from home full time, so I am the primary caregiver. I have strange hours. I usually do my coding/system updates from midnight to 8 am or so, then I watch and play with my son till by wife gets home at around 6 pm. During the day, while I am watching my son, I keep the phone open for any "emergency" situations that come up at the main office. I go to bed early around 8pm or so. I don't require more than 4 hours of sleep, so it works out good.
It's not easy, but it can be done. Plus, I am having the time of my life raising my son, who is now 15 months old. It is such a joy to watch him develop his own personality.
Best of luck to you. You will enjoy being a dad.
First IANAP (I Am Not A Plumber). The valve that is between the wall and the toilet was leaking on my toilet and this is how I fixed it:
1. Went to the hardware store and bought a new valve.
2. I shut the water off to the house at the main valve (this was in the basement at my house).
3. I relieved the water pressure in the house by running a faucet.
4. I used a creacent (sp?) wrench to loosen the couplings on either side of my bad toiled valve. Then removed the old valve.
5. I wrapped the threads on each side of the new valve with teflon (sp?) tape.
6. I reinstalled the new valve and tightened the couplings.
7. I turned back on the water at the main valve to the house. I had my wife stand by the toilet to yell if it was spurting water during this stage incase I didn't get the toilet valve tight enough.
8. I opened the toilet valve a little bit at a time to get the toilet to fill up at a decent rate, but not gushing out. I did this a little bit at a time, flushing to check.
Total cost was under $20 for the teflon tape and the new valve. It may or may not be the correct way to fix it, but it was cheap and it worked. The toilet valve has been leak free for over a year. Hope this helps.
He may not be the best actor, but I always thought he did ok in Star Trek. He seems like a duck out of water in anything else. I'm sure he would want his retiring role to be Star Trek instead of commercials. ...now if they could only get Nimoy.
I'm in Illinois as well. When I was a teenager, I bought a used car from an out of state person. When I did the title transfer at the DMV, they asked me how much I paid for the vehicle for the tax. They added what ever tax was on to the Illinois title transfer fee.
I'm pretty sure that the extra money I paid at the DMV went to the appropriate tax authorities. I never heard another word from the state except when I received my Illinois car title in the mail.
Granted this wasn't in Chicago, but in central Illinois. But, I'm surprised that all the taxes weren't taken care of when you did the title transfer.
Windows 2000 & XP don't crash. I've been using it for years, and it's rock-solid. I rebooted my machine for the first time in a couple of months today (my work PC). All the old "wind0ze crashes!" stuff ceased to be factual when Windows 2000 appeared.
If by rock-solid you mean it doesn't crash as much then I agree. Windows 2000+ is much better than Microsoft's previous attempts at OSes. I have had Windows 2000 crash on me though from a buggy driver. This crash brought down the whole system btw. Most crashes in Unix like OSes do not bring down the whole system.
Plus, for a server, Windows still needs to be rebooted way too often. The only time you have to reboot Linux is for a kernel update. It seems like just about every update requires a reboot with Windows.
To my knowledge, this need to reboot Windows for most updates is due to overall design issues with the OS itself. Hopefully, Microsoft will address this with Longhorn. As you can see, there is some mud that will stick to Longhorn, but you can stick some mud on just about any OS.
I think either you misunderstood me or I misunderstand you. I am not saying to get rid of Social Security Disability. There are many people that are collecting it for legitimate reasons (ie. really are disabled). What my beef is the people who are NOT disabled but fake being disabled to collect benefits instead of working.
I have no problem at all with helping people that are really disabled with Social Security. I do have a problem with people that are perfectly capable to work, but instead choose to take money from my retirement AND people who truly are in need of Social Security Disability.
There is a huge difference between people who really are disabled and those who are using the system as a free lunch.
Firstly, we can turn off all SS's "welfare" provisions (i.e. stuff like paying benefits to non-retirees). Then we can start removing 18yr-olds from the system ... they don't pay in, and can't participate.
You mean you want to revise the ~1996 Welfare reform? For those of you who don't know, the reason that there are less Welfare recipients now than pre-Welfare reform is NOT because there are less people on "welfare", but they have been moved to the Social Security system. Mainly the disability part of Social Security.
When the dot-com bubble crashed I worked a bit at a high-risk loan office. I quit for ethical reasons that I briefly will explain here. I saw first hand how our Social Security system is being used. People (loan applicants) would very plainly tell how they went from welfare to disability by getting jobs then faking injuries to start collecting. Some even went as far as offering to re-roof or paint my house as long as I paid them in cash so they wouldn't get caught by the Social Security Administration.
This is why I laugh everytime I hear Democrats tout the 1996 welfare reform as a good thing. All it did was make it that much more unlikely that the money I pour into Social Security will actually benifit me when I retire.
I could tell stories that would make your stomach ache everytime you saw money going to Social Security from your paycheck. For example: A mother telling her child that if he wants some $50 tennis shoes that he needs to "play dumb" in school. That will allow "mommy" to get disability money for ya. Never mind this child will get poor grades and probably drop out of school and be another on the Social Security gravytrain.
Our money isn't being burned up grandma's and people that have retired after working 30+ years in a factory. It is being burned up, for the most part, by people who found a way to still earn income even though they DON'T WANT TO WORK.
I think you are half right. The problem isn't that the Republicans are elite and looked at as "for the people" with the Democrates "for the people" and looked at as elite. The problem is both parties are overflowing with "golden boys" and very much influenced by special interests (Republicans by corporations and Democrats by labor and lawyers). Neither party seems to be looking out for the little guy.
The REAL problem is we have a two party system and neither party is for us (the average american). Not only that, but most voters feel that they throw their vote away if they vote for anyone other than a Rep or Dem! Which is true as long as people feel that way. We have been sheepherded by the two parties in this country to keep them in power.
Sorry for the rant... haven't had my coffee yet.
I agree with your ass 100%. Can your ass pick lotto numbers too? :)
I couldn't agree more. I totally disagree with the idea that some killer game is going to make Linux the OS of choice for millions. MS OSs didn't get where they are today because of a killer game. They got there because that is what mom/dad used at work and that is what mom/dad bought for home(early years...today there isn't much choice). I don't know about everyone else, but I sure as hell wouldn't buy my son a $1000 machine just to play a game on. The home computer market will move to Linux when the business computer market moves to Linux.
Look at the Amiga as an example. The Amiga was a kick ass computer for its time (and had tons of killer games), but people were buying IBM clones because that is what they knew from/needed for work. Commodore tried to get into the business world too late and died (well that and other piss poor decisions).
Getting a patent and enforcing a patent are two very different things. Like you said, it seems you could patent anything with the current state of the US patent system. Having that patent tried, upheld, and enforced in court is another matter. Any competent company knows that and is not going to waste money on getting un-enforceable patents.
I think they are delaying not due to stealing OSS software ideas, but honestly trying to make their software better. For the first time in many years MS has real competition. They can't release another insecure trashbag OS or database server. If they release before it is actually ready, then they will get tons of bad press and their lunch ate by OSS software.
Lets just hope OSS developers don't sit on their laurels during these delays. If they do they will be playing major catch up come 2005/2006. This is the time for OSS to take the lead. The boys at Redmond may be evil, but they are no fools.
Too bad Linus doesn't release a distro, so we'd know what Linux is supposed to look like.
/dev directory. You have an init process. You have standard utilities such as ls, cp, grep, sed, awk, etc. I have used AIX, Solaris, FreeBSD, and Linux and they do have their differences, but they are more alike than different.
If I'm not mistaken Linus has said he won't endorse or release a distro for that reason alone. Friendly competition between the distros is a good thing. It sparks invention and true innovation. Even the various *BSDs help each other out.
If you sit down at a Linux system you have no idea what you're going to find.
I disagree there. Most *nixes are fairly similar. You have a
From a Systems Administration standpoint alone that makes *BSD a better choice for corporations with a large number of hosts, but Linux gets all the press.
I disagree there as well. I feel that from an administration standpoint with a large number of hosts it wouldn't matter if you were using RedHat, Gentoo, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, or any other *nix for that matter as long as the machines you were running were using the same distro. No, you wouldn't want 10 RedHat boxes, 20 OpenBSD boxes, 35 Gentoo boxes, and 15 AIX boxes. On the other hand, if you had 80 Gentoo boxes that were all kept up to date you wouldn't be any worse off than if you had 80 FreeBSD boxes (generally speaking, I know each OS has its strengths and weaknesses).
IMO the best OS to administer is the OS you know. You could have the best/most secure OS ever, but you would still get owned if you didn't know how to administer it. Hell, even the "security hole haven" Windows can be made more or less secure by a good admin.
Didn't they just get more wiretapping power a few years ago with the patriot act? It seems they won't be satisfied till everyone has a microphone and transmitter strapped to them just incase they might, on the off chance, be planning a crime.
Its a sad situation in any country when the government feels that this is something they need to inflict upon its citizens. Its even more sad when the citizens let them.
Offshoring will never stop if you support the companies that do it. These companies would NOT want to give up the American consumer market for any reason. So if you want them to stop offshoring, stop buying products from companies that offshore. If the government won't do anything to help the American worker. Then the American public needs to do it themselves.
I'm not an economist, but that seems logical to me.
I forgot to mention I am talking about what is on the default install. I know you can install perl and cygwin on NT.
The reverse is true as well. It is much easier for me to edit a few config files than to wade through a GUI to configure options or tinker with the windows registry(ack).
Not to mention a total lack of perl or a good scripting shell on windows. I depend on scripts to help wade through log files and such.
I guess it depends on what you are used to.
Xenix was developed by Microsoft. (old)SCO then built a business around selling the once Microsoft product. I think there was a deal between (old)SCO and MS that MS would not compete against Xenix with another Unix OS.
This agreement is probably still in place with the new SCO due to the new SCO getting a lot of the assets of the old SCO.
Tinfoil time: This whole thing could be a ploy by Microsoft to end the SCO Unix agreement by folding SCO. They more than likely would not be able to buy them due to anti-trust. With the agreement gone they could sell a Unix based OS to compete against Linux/other Unixes. Plus, they can try to damage other Unix/Linux businesses in the process.
That is all speculation. I am not at all even sure that agreement still exists. I'm sure someone on here more knowledgeable about (old)SCO Xenix development can correct me if I'm off base.
It has been long speculated on here that Microsoft was bankrolling SCO. Now with proof, lets hope that this MS/SCO FUD about the Linux source is seen for what it is by the corporations and most of all the courts.
I was looking forward to a flood of game ports to Linux. I guess one more is better than no more. Why companies don't release executables for Linux (like Id for quake(1-3) and Bioware for NWN)? Most of the games today are datafiles anyway (ie. pictures and sound that would work on any platform). Are game companies so locked in to using Microsoft's APIs like DirectX that they can't program a game to be portable anymore?
Electronic arts probably pisses me off the most as they make a few changes to Id's engines (MOHAA) and neglect to release binaries for Linux. Yes, I am aware of the port on icculus.org, but EA could have done a port of MOHAA long ago.
Not even the flight simulator. MS Flight Simulator as it is today was originally developed by Bruce Artwick Organization (BAO). It was later bought by MS. I'm not real knowlegable on the whole deal, but I remembered that buyout. I'm sure someone else here knows the whole history.