I just looked, and all the old AD&D handbooks are a good deal these days on eBay. I don't have a complete set (actually, all I have is the 2nd ed. Player's Handbook) but I think I'll put together a set. When those fine books can be had for $6-8 each, it's time to spend fifty bucks or so and have a bit of history. It's the kind of material that's at bottom right now and probably won't ever be cheaper. And I looked a bit ago at what they're asking for the new edition handbooks that (apparently) just came out. Ouch!
Whenever I need to use MSN messenger, I use an ancient ANCIENT binary of it that I archived about five years ago. It installs clean, it lets me communicate, and it goes the hell away when I uninstall it. I'm using it on a Windows 2000 machine. Don't know if it would run on XP, but don't see why it wouldn't. It's from long before.NET days, it's just a Win32 binary.
Students shouldn't need to run a firewall. A firewall should be in place by default at a 'higher' level in the network. It's ludicrious in this day and age that assumptions are made that it should be possible to run services on any and every machine on a subnet. People should have to make requests if they want to run services, and the firewall specifically opened for them, on specific ports.
Likely, many of them don't have viruses or spyware on them.
Much as it might come to a surprise to some people here, lots of folk are very conservative with their computer, and take good care of it by being very slow to change anything.
Find a copy of OS/2 Warp and put that on your system. Then when they want to 'check it out' get all fretful and what-not, but definitely allow them access to the machine to run their tests.
if they can't figure out how to use it they sure as hell won't have a chance in their computer science course!
Maybe I am old-school in this regard, but where I come from, 'operators' are drones. They can be rather dull people. Consistency and the ability to remember highly-detailed procedures and do them that same way repeatedly are essential. Basically, an 'operator' can be someone with downes syndrome who knows that tapes are mounted, the printer needs to be kept loaded with paper, etc.
The notion that mundane 'computer operation' is an essential thing for each and every Computer Science Student to understand is ridiculous. Students of computer engineering and design, scholars who study Knuth and hard-core algorhythms, do NOT need to know anything much at all about the arcana that resides in an/etc/ directory on a Unix system.
Let's get real. There are all sorts of us who enjoy futzing around with low level detail. That's a 'generalist' approach, and it is NOT the way the whole world has to be. Electrical engineers do not need to know how to solder, how to run a wave soldering machine, and how to do rework of high-pincount SMD packages to be electrical engineers. And computer scientists don't need to know how to admin linux boxes.
Actually, for what is being referred to here, the backup should be a 'second source' for data retention. Perhaps MySQL, or are we talking about a logging of raw data? Definitely NOT just a backup of the data as Oracle renders it.
If you think installing an OS on everbody's systems that has a telentd, an ftpd, a c compiler, and a whole conglomeration of open source apps is going to magically clear up the problem, you're beyond reasoning with.
Your proposal also means all these people will either need to establish a second Root account, and set it up with a reasonable random password, and be responsible about what they do with it, or you're proposing some draconian organization have 'root' on all these people's machines.
The capacity, as well as the potential, for abuse that such a proposal represents, is staggering.
Clueless 'regular folks' should NOT have their relatively lame and 'not particularly powerful as a remote box' machines replaced with Linux, or any other highly-powerful-remote-usable operating system.
Nobody seems to have mentioned this. If you go to the 'Democracy Now' website, the title of the article I saw was: "Will Bush Backers Manipulate Votes to Deliver GW Another Election?"
Democracy Now is a media outlet that's associated with Pacifica. They are about as left wing as any media organization in the United States. They'd be happiest if Fidel Castro won the election as a write-in candidate.
Please, can't we focus on more mainstream news sources? Pacifica makes Indynews look moderate.
If there was a clear case of racial discrimination to be made, it wouldn't be mere 'talking points' for anonymous people to post about on the Internet, plus the usual 'shakedown' talking bits from the regular complainers who we KNOW will always claim they're being discriminated. A solid case would have been made by the mainstream Democrats, and something would have been done about it.
Instead, there's just the constant whine of 'conspiracy' folk, trying to de-legitimize an election.
If Gore had won the electoral votes in his home state of Tennessee (it's almost unheard of for a presidential candidate to not win the 'favorite son' vote in his home state- even Walter Mondale could do that...) he wouldn't have needed to play statistical games and try to cheat to win the Florida electoral votes. But he couldn't even win in his home state. He lost the election. Deal with it.
Apple has been in love with 'control the user' features since day one.
Steve Jobs, at a speech at the National Press Club soon after the release of the first Macintosh, referred to the Mac as a 'hacker proof' computer. He meant that it was a sealed box, very difficult to get into, with nothing inside to mess around with.
There very soon developed the inevitable third party market that proved him (somewhat) wrong, but Apple has ALWAYS tried to control the 'user experience' as much more more than any other vendor. It was ALWAYS a bitch to get into the dinkyscreen Macs.
The MAC address definitely IS hardwared into the card. You're referring to using software to 'spoof' a MAC address. The MAC address is still in hardware, often in a little 8 pin PROM chip, on your ethernet card. It's probably unreachable after spoofing, but it's there.
Since when does these schmucks start thinking that I as a consumer doesnt have the right to take apart, enable/disable features, and smash to smithreens whatever shit I buy from them?
Go right ahead. Since when do they have to make it easy for you to do so? You can pick another product if the one that you can't crack the DRM in isn't suitable for your purposes.
and their only solution is to insert the Restore CD
No, that 'fix' was instituted because they had PROVEN their customers are ignorant. And since 'Tech Support Costs' are built into the base price of most of those products, I'm happy with anything they do to throw a road block up in front of the tards who sit on the line and listen to the muzak. It lowers MY cost of buying their product.
I suspect it's added functionality, and can be used or not used by the OS installed. You can install MS-DOS on your motherboard's system and it doesn't use 'bootable CDROM' functionality at all. You can plug non VL-Bus video cards into those old 486 motherboards with VL-bus slots. This likely won't be any different.
All the fretting here is ridiculous, considering that Linux and indeed Windows NT use almost no BIOS functionality in the first place. The BIOS is a boot loader, then it's pitched in the trash by the OS. There will be some sort of a 'secure handoff' from BIOS control to the OS in DRM-enabled OSes, but that's a user choice.
Although I am sure that people will continue to have their FUD fest about this, loudly and like braying sheep.
If you want to be able to view/listen to DRM-keyed content on your equipment, you use the DRM functionality. If you don't care and/or choose to boycott the DRM content, disable DRM and/or permanently remove the DRM functionality from your hardware and software. You even get the added benefit that DRM-enabled content will then be automatically blocked from you ever having to view or listen to it on your equipment.
Slashdot Mirror
I just looked, and all the old AD&D handbooks are a good deal these days on eBay. I don't have a complete set (actually, all I have is the 2nd ed. Player's Handbook) but I think I'll put together a set. When those fine books can be had for $6-8 each, it's time to spend fifty bucks or so and have a bit of history. It's the kind of material that's at bottom right now and probably won't ever be cheaper. And I looked a bit ago at what they're asking for the new edition handbooks that (apparently) just came out. Ouch!
Whenever I need to use MSN messenger, I use an ancient ANCIENT binary of it that I archived about five years ago. It installs clean, it lets me communicate, and it goes the hell away when I uninstall it. I'm using it on a Windows 2000 machine. Don't know if it would run on XP, but don't see why it wouldn't. It's from long before .NET days, it's just a Win32 binary.
You mean there are people who have paid for Slashdot?!?!?
Students shouldn't need to run a firewall. A firewall should be in place by default at a 'higher' level in the network. It's ludicrious in this day and age that assumptions are made that it should be possible to run services on any and every machine on a subnet. People should have to make requests if they want to run services, and the firewall specifically opened for them, on specific ports.
Likely, many of them don't have viruses or spyware on them.
Much as it might come to a surprise to some people here, lots of folk are very conservative with their computer, and take good care of it by being very slow to change anything.
Find a copy of OS/2 Warp and put that on your system. Then when they want to 'check it out' get all fretful and what-not, but definitely allow them access to the machine to run their tests.
Heh.
if they can't figure out how to use it they sure as hell won't have a chance in their computer science course!
/etc/ directory on a Unix system.
Maybe I am old-school in this regard, but where I come from, 'operators' are drones. They can be rather dull people. Consistency and the ability to remember highly-detailed procedures and do them that same way repeatedly are essential. Basically, an 'operator' can be someone with downes syndrome who knows that tapes are mounted, the printer needs to be kept loaded with paper, etc.
The notion that mundane 'computer operation' is an essential thing for each and every Computer Science Student to understand is ridiculous. Students of computer engineering and design, scholars who study Knuth and hard-core algorhythms, do NOT need to know anything much at all about the arcana that resides in an
Let's get real. There are all sorts of us who enjoy futzing around with low level detail. That's a 'generalist' approach, and it is NOT the way the whole world has to be. Electrical engineers do not need to know how to solder, how to run a wave soldering machine, and how to do rework of high-pincount SMD packages to be electrical engineers. And computer scientists don't need to know how to admin linux boxes.
Actually, for what is being referred to here, the backup should be a 'second source' for data retention. Perhaps MySQL, or are we talking about a logging of raw data? Definitely NOT just a backup of the data as Oracle renders it.
If you think installing an OS on everbody's systems that has a telentd, an ftpd, a c compiler, and a whole conglomeration of open source apps is going to magically clear up the problem, you're beyond reasoning with.
Your proposal also means all these people will either need to establish a second Root account, and set it up with a reasonable random password, and be responsible about what they do with it, or you're proposing some draconian organization have 'root' on all these people's machines.
The capacity, as well as the potential, for abuse that such a proposal represents, is staggering.
Clueless 'regular folks' should NOT have their relatively lame and 'not particularly powerful as a remote box' machines replaced with Linux, or any other highly-powerful-remote-usable operating system.
Nobody seems to have mentioned this. If you go to the 'Democracy Now' website, the title of the article I saw was: "Will Bush Backers Manipulate Votes to Deliver GW Another Election?"
Democracy Now is a media outlet that's associated with Pacifica. They are about as left wing as any media organization in the United States. They'd be happiest if Fidel Castro won the election as a write-in candidate.
Please, can't we focus on more mainstream news sources? Pacifica makes Indynews look moderate.
Is all the source code for Java open and released? There's no 'closed source' JVM that you're proposing we rely on?
Small government?
God gawd! 'Tip' O'neil was still alive!
Your bullshit class warfare rant is really tired. Shouldn't you be out selling your newspaper on the corner?
Oracle says to make a dead-tree paper backup of your records as entered in their database? Do you have a cite?
If there was a clear case of racial discrimination to be made, it wouldn't be mere 'talking points' for anonymous people to post about on the Internet, plus the usual 'shakedown' talking bits from the regular complainers who we KNOW will always claim they're being discriminated. A solid case would have been made by the mainstream Democrats, and something would have been done about it.
Instead, there's just the constant whine of 'conspiracy' folk, trying to de-legitimize an election.
If Gore had won the electoral votes in his home state of Tennessee (it's almost unheard of for a presidential candidate to not win the 'favorite son' vote in his home state- even Walter Mondale could do that...) he wouldn't have needed to play statistical games and try to cheat to win the Florida electoral votes. But he couldn't even win in his home state. He lost the election. Deal with it.
And where does Mae Ling Mak come into this?
Anybody who is ANYBODY knows that the original phrase was: 'Mae Ling Mak, naked and petrified.'
The Natalie Portman crap came later. Did Mae Ling sue Slashdot? Is that why she seems to have been wiped from history here?
Apple has been in love with 'control the user' features since day one.
Steve Jobs, at a speech at the National Press Club soon after the release of the first Macintosh, referred to the Mac as a 'hacker proof' computer. He meant that it was a sealed box, very difficult to get into, with nothing inside to mess around with.
There very soon developed the inevitable third party market that proved him (somewhat) wrong, but Apple has ALWAYS tried to control the 'user experience' as much more more than any other vendor. It was ALWAYS a bitch to get into the dinkyscreen Macs.
Your motherboard uses the BIOS code to initiate the bootloader, then the bootloader kicks it out of the way and it's irrelevant.
With DRM, they could even completely prevent you from flashing your BIOS with LinuxBIOS, or anything else useful.
With [insert boogey-man technology here] they could even completely remove your ability to turn on the computer and castrate your father too!!!
Sheesh. Is there a sale on tinfoil or what?
The MAC address definitely IS hardwared into the card. You're referring to using software to 'spoof' a MAC address. The MAC address is still in hardware, often in a little 8 pin PROM chip, on your ethernet card. It's probably unreachable after spoofing, but it's there.
Since when does these schmucks start thinking that I as a consumer doesnt have the right to take apart, enable/disable features, and smash to smithreens whatever shit I buy from them?
Go right ahead. Since when do they have to make it easy for you to do so? You can pick another product if the one that you can't crack the DRM in isn't suitable for your purposes.
and their only solution is to insert the Restore CD
No, that 'fix' was instituted because they had PROVEN their customers are ignorant. And since 'Tech Support Costs' are built into the base price of most of those products, I'm happy with anything they do to throw a road block up in front of the tards who sit on the line and listen to the muzak. It lowers MY cost of buying their product.
I suspect it's added functionality, and can be used or not used by the OS installed. You can install MS-DOS on your motherboard's system and it doesn't use 'bootable CDROM' functionality at all. You can plug non VL-Bus video cards into those old 486 motherboards with VL-bus slots. This likely won't be any different.
All the fretting here is ridiculous, considering that Linux and indeed Windows NT use almost no BIOS functionality in the first place. The BIOS is a boot loader, then it's pitched in the trash by the OS. There will be some sort of a 'secure handoff' from BIOS control to the OS in DRM-enabled OSes, but that's a user choice.
Although I am sure that people will continue to have their FUD fest about this, loudly and like braying sheep.
Why would it mean goodbye to BIOS flashing?
If you want to be able to view/listen to DRM-keyed content on your equipment, you use the DRM functionality. If you don't care and/or choose to boycott the DRM content, disable DRM and/or permanently remove the DRM functionality from your hardware and software. You even get the added benefit that DRM-enabled content will then be automatically blocked from you ever having to view or listen to it on your equipment.
Does the CD manufacturer claim Red-Book compliance anywhere on the packaging?