Once upon a time, Unix machines of any sort were unheard of, and high school students like me were happy with a 286, a greyscale monitor, DOS 3, and Word Perfect 5.1 (and Civ:-).
It was reasonably priced, and even if it crashed at least it didn't mudge your hard drive.
There was once a time when MS wasn't outwardly evil.
So according to this guy, if I write a killer app, compile it for Linux, and sell it binaries-only, that will somehow make Linus wither like the wicked witch of the west once watered?
Worst case RMS won't invite me to his Superbowl party.
Then there's his statement "but Linux is still a Unix, and Unix is still losing market share". That's not FUD. It's fudging.
An expensive computer is like a Jaguar. Extra show off value, but not extra benefit to your life over a cheap one.. (Unless you're a Quake fan. *grin*)
The day is coming when a compuer has the same value in our lives as a toaster: you replace it when it wears down enough and the hard drive actuator says its last hurrah, not because of flashy ads advertising expensive processors for the machine that is as usefull as my perfectly nice clunky 486.
Code bloat used to sell. No longer.
Gotta be carefull, folks...
on
1984, today.
·
· Score: 1
If this guy's decompiler idea is particularly good, it would be too tempting for his boss not to go after him.
An high density laserdisk with an SGML'd archive of just about everything. (or everything.slashdot.org:-) A disk player with voice recognition and enough AI to search through it. Maybe a jack coming out of the player to stick in a phone booth for anything *not* on the disk.
Lahore is right next door to India -- in Pakistan. That's a mighty long border between those two countries. Can't seal it hermetically. India isn't exactly going to have an easy time keeping Pakistani agents from applying for programming jobs. I bet a classified memo from their security agency says "it's hopeless," and that they're just being a tad whimsical with this idea.
Microsoft could start a campaign FUDding people about the risk of their medical records being seen by scary Hackers (TM), and then offering a product with a decommoditized protocol for hospital LANs for transfering medical records in a proprietary format.
That's about all they could do at this point. The FDA is capable of barring their entry to anything they could seriously munge up.
First, let's not have loss-of-data comments. Hospitals are anal enough that they print out everything at the same time they enter it into any computer. If you go for surgery somewhere, the appointment scheduling and room scheduling will quite likely be on NT. But that won't spell your doom.
However, an NT crash in a hospital is still a major headache. The typical large hospital has one cluster of operating rooms (for the prescheduled surgeries) next to a large recovery room (pre-op right next door as well, as well as a waiting room). In the recovery room's desk area is an NT server that handles room bookings with all of the hosptal's wards. When the LAN is working, it's awesome. By the time the patient ir out of the RR, the nurse station at his ward has staff knowing exactly when to expect him, what specialists to call in an emergency, diet, prescriptions, and as an added benefit, the patient's friends wait for him by his room, rather than outside the RR (where only one or two should stick around -- a crowd around there would be in the way). The patient's paper records arrive with him.
When the LAN crashes, this we enter nightmare land. Paper records have to be copied and delivered by hand, as well as confirmation that the ward is ready for the patient. (forget about doing it over the phone -- too many details to convey) The hospital can't divert too many staff for this, and can't use the tube shoot (it's mostly for delivering samples and drugs). The recovery room gets crowded with patients who aren't cleared out, and the hospital may have to postpone prescheduled surgery (I saw this happen as a volunteer in one place.)
So, knowing Linux has made an inroad is very good news. There was only one real impediment: you can't ask nurses to start learning Unix commands, or they will give you a very dirty look
If a software company put not for mission-critical applications on all its products, would you buy something from it to run your furnace? Your water heater? Your cooking appliances? If you would, you better be ready to give a long explanation to the fire inspector. No problem, sir! It's automatically set to power down if the smoke detector goes off! And if it fails to do it, I can reinstall!
And without the heavy appliances, would you really need a smart toaster?
Microsoft's source is assembler-diddled spaghetti. Their smart houses will never make it to market.
How much of a communications infrastructure do you guys have left? I'm Israeli, and if anything my interest would be in reaching your X25 net to try to put it through that no, we're not putting crocodile eggs in your lakes. Keeping it up would be very much in my best interest.
2.
I'm just wondering, as an Iraqi, do you think there's a chance Iraq could adopt a political system other than the Ba'ath? I've yet to find an American politician to whom the thought had even come to mind. They keep the sanctions in place because they don't think it is even possible that Iraq would be ruled by someone who isn't a crazed Ba'athist dictator.
Even though you guys did place sanctions on us, a lot of us ain't to keen on them. But, we're not to keen on getting gassed, either.
Don't take it down. Take down its censorship capacity. For example, China presumably is using some of its routers to control content coming in to the People's Republic. Change it. If you manage to crack a router, see what IP addresses it's set to reject. Alter them. Find the entry for say, Amnesty International, replace their IP address with, say, my lame machine (which I use for programming practice, so it serves pages that nobody would really miss). Find whatever file they use for keywords to block. Change the spellings.
(I'm Israeli, and now that Syria's email access is growing, I have a vested interest in learning how to do this myself.:-)
1. Cortez and Pizzaro, both of whom were in search of precious metals.
2. I wish I remembered the name of the 1st serious geologist. Name one after him, and the other after the canal-obssessed astronomer. (blanking out here... )
3. H.G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs, the first folks to write Mars sci-fi novels?
Slashdot Mirror
Once upon a time, Unix machines of any sort were unheard of, and high school students like me were happy with a 286, a greyscale monitor, DOS 3, and Word Perfect 5.1 (and Civ :-).
It was reasonably priced, and even if it crashed at least it didn't mudge your hard drive.
There was once a time when MS wasn't outwardly evil.
Hey, Rob, how about you queso a server /. effect better?
before linking to it, so we can see
which servers handle the
This one's pages were done with MS software,
so anyone care to queso it?
So according to this guy, if I write a killer app, compile it for Linux, and sell it binaries-only, that will somehow make Linus wither like the wicked witch of the west once watered?
Worst case RMS won't invite me to his Superbowl party.
Then there's his statement "but Linux is still a Unix, and Unix is still losing market share". That's not FUD. It's fudging.
Compare Netscape Communicator to Gecko.
'nuff said. Lewis's claim of bloat killing
OSS software is bunk, because the link between feature creep and bloat isn't there.
Feature creep in OSS means somebody offering new command utilities, maybe a GUI here and there. If I don't put it in my hard drive, it isn't bloat.
An expensive computer is like a Jaguar. Extra show
off value, but not extra benefit to your life over
a cheap one..
(Unless you're a Quake fan. *grin*)
The day is coming when a compuer has the same
value in our lives as a toaster: you replace it
when it wears down enough and the hard drive actuator says its last hurrah, not because of flashy ads advertising expensive processors for the machine that is as usefull as my perfectly nice clunky 486.
Code bloat used to sell. No longer.
If this guy's decompiler idea is particularly good, it would be too tempting for his boss not to go after him.
Word to the wise.
Would be hacktivists might want to volunteer for sites like East Timor's to patch up their holes.
My personal box is an old clunky 486 w/ Linux,
and I plan to use legos to attach my new CD-ROM
drive to it.
An high density laserdisk with an SGML'd archive of just about everything. (or everything.slashdot.org :-) A disk player with voice recognition and enough AI to search through it. Maybe a jack coming out of the player to stick in a phone booth for anything *not* on the disk.
Nerd's dream come true.
France making a sensible policy decision?
Hell must have frozen over.
Expect Microsoft to open its source in the
next few days.
If they restrict it to a full hardware refund,
people can use it to upgrade their machines cheap!
1. prevent software refunds
2. prevent hardware upgrades on-the-cheap
3. prevent the OEM's from getting PO'd and
demanding a new deal on the licenses.
MS can't do all three.
Of all the economics professors in the world, why, oh, why, did Microsoft had to get an MIT guy for their sycophancy?
To make this all the more bitter, this guy has tenure.
*fume*
Lahore is right next door to India -- in Pakistan.
That's a mighty long border between those two countries. Can't seal it hermetically. India isn't
exactly going to have an easy time keeping Pakistani agents from applying for programming jobs. I bet a classified memo from their security agency says "it's hopeless," and that they're just being a tad whimsical with this idea.
Microsoft could start a campaign FUDding people about the risk of their medical records being seen by scary Hackers (TM), and then offering a product with a decommoditized protocol for hospital LANs for transfering medical records in a proprietary format.
That's about all they could do at this point.
The FDA is capable of barring their entry to anything they could seriously munge up.
First, let's not have loss-of-data comments. Hospitals are anal enough that they print out everything at the same time they enter it into any computer. If you go for surgery somewhere, the appointment scheduling and room scheduling will quite likely be on NT. But that won't spell your doom.
However, an NT crash in a hospital is still a major headache. The typical large hospital has one cluster of operating rooms (for the prescheduled surgeries) next to a large recovery room (pre-op right next door as well, as well as a waiting room). In the recovery room's desk area is an NT server that handles room bookings with all of the hosptal's wards. When the LAN is working, it's awesome. By the time the patient ir out of the RR, the nurse station at his ward has staff knowing exactly when to expect him, what specialists to call in an emergency, diet, prescriptions, and as an added benefit, the patient's friends wait for him by his room, rather than outside the RR (where only one or two should stick around -- a crowd around there would be in the way). The patient's paper records arrive with him.
When the LAN crashes, this we enter nightmare land. Paper records have to be copied and delivered by hand, as well as confirmation that the ward is ready for the patient. (forget about doing it over the phone -- too many details to convey) The hospital can't divert too many staff for this, and can't use the tube shoot (it's mostly for delivering samples and drugs). The recovery room gets crowded with patients who aren't cleared out, and the hospital may have to postpone prescheduled surgery (I saw this happen as a volunteer in one place.)
So, knowing Linux has made an inroad is very good news. There was only one real impediment: you can't ask nurses to start learning Unix commands, or they will give you a very dirty look
Here's something to note:
If a software company put not for mission-critical applications on all its products, would you buy something from it to run your furnace? Your water heater? Your cooking appliances? If you would, you better be ready to give a long explanation to the fire inspector.
No problem, sir! It's automatically set to power down if the smoke detector goes off! And if it fails to do it, I can reinstall!
And without the heavy appliances, would you really
need a smart toaster?
Microsoft's source is assembler-diddled spaghetti. Their smart houses will never make it to market.
Ahlan wasahlan,
1. The slashdot-relevant part:
How much of a communications infrastructure do you guys have left? I'm Israeli, and if anything my interest would be in reaching your X25 net to try to put it through that no, we're not putting crocodile eggs in your lakes. Keeping it up would be very much in my best interest.
2.
I'm just wondering, as an Iraqi, do you think there's a chance Iraq could adopt a political system other than the Ba'ath? I've yet to find an American politician to whom the thought had even come to mind. They keep the sanctions in place because they don't think it is even possible that Iraq would be ruled by someone who isn't a crazed Ba'athist dictator.
Even though you guys did place sanctions on us, a lot of us ain't to keen on them. But, we're not to keen on getting gassed, either.
...do it right.
:-)
Don't take it down. Take down its censorship capacity. For example, China presumably is using
some of its routers to control content coming in to the People's Republic. Change it. If you manage to crack a router, see what IP addresses it's set to reject. Alter them. Find the entry for say, Amnesty International, replace their IP address with, say, my lame machine (which I use for programming practice, so it serves pages that nobody would really miss). Find whatever file they
use for keywords to block. Change the spellings.
(I'm Israeli, and now that Syria's email access is growing, I have a vested interest in learning how to do this myself.
'nuff said.
1. Cortez and Pizzaro, both of whom were in
search of precious metals.
2. I wish I remembered the name of the 1st serious
geologist. Name one after him, and the other after
the canal-obssessed astronomer.
(blanking out here... )
3. H.G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs, the
first folks to write Mars sci-fi novels?