On fake government. An investigation into what the hell Congress has been doing the last 10 years. We used to have news outlet that reported on this kind of thing. My best news source now is the Daily Show for National News. For local state news I still read the paper which is probably why I went to dinner recently and was the only one who new that they were planning to build huge privately owned toll roads in our state and that there were plans to build 16 coal fired power plants.
I mean these weren't illiterate people, but they had decided that the local paper was liberal trype, so they quit reading it. I wish it was their land that they were going to take through eminant domain.
We have a large amount of data entry which goes into third party software and Excel spreadsheet. The people that are entering the data find that it is more convenient to just keep the caps lock key on. I find it very annoying when I go into work on those computers, but I can't blame them. I've heard of many people who complain about this use of the cap lock key, but in the real world there are still a lot of people who are using it.
Are they kidding. The last version was only supported for one year after the previous version. So I'm going to go tell the PHB we should start using a distribution that should be upgraded every other year. Unless they can offer longer version support I don't see this helping.
Those of us working in the real world don't change versions unless we have to, because it lowers our TCO. I know a data center that was still using RH8 on some of their servers up until 4 months ago and last year I talked with a guy who said they still had RH6.2 on one of their servers.
Heck, until six months ago I had RH7.3 running on 3 servers and still have RH7.1 running on one.
At a minimum I want 3 years security support and prefer 5.
Why would I care if I obviously have servers which aren't using security support. Because I don't want multiple flavors of linux, this keeps my training cost down and support cost down.
They have always had a Ministry of Defense. Up until now though they've only been used to wave white flag and yell "Runaway, Runaway, Runaway". The really important news here is that they have attacked something.
Twenty one years ago they attacked a Greenpeace vessel and had they're first victory at sea in 300 years. Now they're going after OpenOffice, man these guys truly have balls.
Be afraid Iran, be very afraid. In 5,000 years they may just come after you.
Only one day after we were told how some of the drivers could be hacked on wireless, now we are being told that wireless is the way to go.
This is brought to you by the same MBA's that brought HDTV. I have seen it, but don't see that it is worth the premium price.
I'm not necessarily happy with DVD's for movies either. I believe I've returned 10 movie rentals for every video tape rental that I ever made.
I think we are being sold a lot of hogwash
But I do believe that some of the consumers are catching on or will. I have had a couple of people contact me about their wireless network being slow and then I go to their site and find that they have 15+ computers in an office connected to a single linksys router. Then I have to explain to them what there problem is and then explain to them how insecure they are. On the second one I was even heads up enough to monitor their traffic while I discussed their network topology. When it came time to actually look at there network their computer guy was wanting to give me the WEP key. I just told him in front of the CEO nevermind I've already got it.
Yeah, it was a mean thing to do and it was also the wrong thing to do, but I've gotten tired of discussing over and over again the insecurities of wireless. I feel like I'm beating my head on a stone wall when it comes to this. I think I just smelled that attitude that if I said anything about it they would just come back, " Nobody would hack us were encrypted and we've never been hacked ". I just wanted to skip that discussion. I also think it's negligent on the part of an employer small or large that you should leave valuable information in the open. There are employees which are dependent on a job whose paycheck is dependent on the security of the company. Would you leave the doors unlocked at night?
Okay rant over. Thanks, I feel better.
One of the big issues is versions of platform. He said it right up front RedHat, Suse, Ubuntu. Which one are we developing for? If that isn't bad enough very few have a stable version which they will support for 5 years. Yes there are server versions for each one of these which are supported for 5 years plus, but most of the linux community is using the latest and greatest flavor of Fedora, Suse, Ubuntu, not the 5 year stable version.
Who wants to develope for a constantly moving target? Especially when the total market is less than 5% of users.
Now let's go back to RedHat, Suse. They have stable products, but look at the cost. The last time I looked a basic server version from RH or Suse, cost $349 per year over 5 years thats $1745. Of course both of these come with a lot of capability. But more than an equivalent cost of a MS server? Yes there are a lot of hidden costs in a MS server, but you have to really struggle most of the time to get the bean and pointy heads, beyond that initial cost. The concept of CAL's usually totally befuddles them.
So for the most part you have a small percentage of the market share using linux with a version that is going to be stable for 5 years. The remaining desktop users are changing their version of Linux every 6 months.
So who the hell in there right mind is going to spend a shit load of development cost on a product that runs on a platform that nobody is probably going to be using 1 year from now.
Currently I see it as linux is currently suffering from chicken and egg syndrom from about every direction. A large number of people won't use linux because they don't have the apps they need. No one will develope the apps they need on linux because not enough people are using it.
No companies develope drivers for devices, because not enough people are using it.
There are not enough people out there to support linux, because there aren't enough people out there using linux.
But, could you imagine what the newsgroups would look like if 15% of the desktop market were linux, how about 7%. 7% would probably double the traffic. 15% would probably triple it and I hate to think about the flame wars started between know it all's and newbie's. That's another hump we have to get over. Not everyone has thick enough skin to get their information from newgroups.
We still have quite a few hurdles to make it into the main stream. I just wonder how many of us are going to tough it out for the next 5 or 10 years for that to happen.
This is from an IT Managers perspective.
So far from everything I have seen about Ubuntu is that they don't get it. A stable release needs to be stable and supported for 3 minimum and maybe 5 years. And I'd prefer not to see a new release but once every 18 months. I don't want tech's going around installing the latest version, because it's the lastest version. I don't want to argue with them about it. I don't want 6 didn't version of an OS running on my desktops and servers.
2nd with this continuos release cycles your never going to get software providers to support the platform. It would be financial suicide for the software company or cost prohibitive for the end user. "Sure we'll support Ubuntu but it will cost 2x what it cost for RH or Windows".
I think Ubuntu and Fedora have done some great things for the linux community as far as moving it along, but when they say they are ready for the desktop (General desktop usage) then they are way off.
1) They do not have a mainstream Office Suite that can replace MS Office. They have something that's close OpenOffice, but it is currently not capable of replacing MS Office in 70% of the environments where I see MS Office in use. Why? Because it does not support document sharing of Excel or Calc sheets. Everywhere I've been either small, medium, or large size companies they use sharing of Excel documents. I've gotten to the point where I've quit showing OpenOffice to other people because invariably everything is fine up until the time you tell them that OpenOffice does not support sharing.
2) Very, very few companies support/build software for Linux OS. There are too many companies out there that have coders who are only versed in Visual Basic or Visual C++.
So until there is some break through in an application that is a got to have it, and it only runs on linux I don't think we will see a big swing over to linux.
But between now and then nobody is going to make that effort unless they have a platform that is going to be stable for at least a couple of years. That's where RH is doing something very right.
Let the ubur geeks have something to play with Fedora, Ubuntu, but provide a business product that's stable and developers can count on.
I would recommend one of the redhat classes. About half of the training classes I have attended have been through redhat. I pay my own way sometimes for classes and when it comes to classes the only ones I'll put my money on are the redhat ones. So far I have been very satisfied with there classes and can't remember being bored during any of there classes. Each instructor is a little different and has different skills that they are willing to share (beyond just the course work). I've learned a few tips and tricks on how to more effectively use the vi editor and gotten help with some bash shell programs. Even had an instructor point out that one of the bash scripts in the manual, while it worked, was a bad example of coding and spent some time explaining what was wrong with it.
So with my money I try to look at what skills sets I need and look through the red hat catalogue to see if they have something on it.
I've never taken a SANS course but have heard good thing about it
Microsoft classes from my experience are a crap shoot. Sometimes you get lucky and get a good instructor and sometimes you just get somebody whose passing the time of day and will spend as much time talking about their drive to work or home repairs as they will about the material. But of course MS makes their stuff so straight forward and easy to use there's hardly any need for classes. I don't even know why they bother with documentation.
For those of you outside the US. Please remember that Jerry Springer and the US government does not represent the people that live in this country, despite what the constitutional document says.
Washington DC too small to be a state too large to be an asylum for the mentally deranged.
Maybe we should ask people in other countries what they do with their insane people. Maybe they have a better plan.
I have made trips to Asia and Europe and never had a laptop checked, never even opened.
But if they did fail to declare something that was purchased abroad there could be serious consequences.
How would they know, they have their ways.
I always make it a point to never screw around with people that carry guns anyway
If I had some way to vote on US grants going to Project Gutenberg, I certainly would do so.
If you live in the US then the closest you can come to doing this, is to send/inform your congressman. That's why they call our form of democracy a representative democracy. Yes, I realize that not much may come out of this, but hey, we don't tell them, then they don't know (I don't think any of them or their aides are slashdot readers). I'm pretty sure though that they are still quite busy spanking some CEO's and raving to every local news reporter the horrendous indecency imposed on America when Janet Jackson exposed her breast.
Maybe, instead of just shutting down web sites (slashdotting),/. could request reponses be sent to congressmen and see if it has any effect. We could pick a topic such as this, and confirm we responded to our congressman with a yeah or neh (your choice, you know like a poll where we tell someone outside of/. the results) and see if we have any sway or not.
Or we could just continue to critic articles and television shows we haven't read or seen and bitch about "how it sucks the man is getting us down or might get us down".
With all the little windows with select boxes maybe someone with a more artistic bend could make an art piece out of their survey and we could have a contest. Snap shot your answers and submit them for the first annual MS answers art show.
We could do this every year and I could bring the tent with lemonade and cookies.
Here, here I agree. We tried to set it up so that it would be Dev on some systems and production on some others. Then the developers just couldn't live with that constraint. Servers crashed, "I don't know why, couldn't be anything that we are doing". Silently they moved their development code back to the development server. It began to crash. But by then they had discussed or told upper management that using a development server was to cumbersome so guess what happened during the budget crunch. We needed another server and now the development server is pushed into a production role and it crashes twice a week. Despite the song it's not us, I believe that people are beginning to realize that development should not be done on production systems.
I don't know about flaps being available in this accident at Siox City. I believe they had complete hydraulic failure and were reduced to controlling by manipulating engine throttles alone.
I have been using SAmba for about 2 years now and I haven't been able to find diddly squat from the samba log. This is one of the more frustating things I have had to put up with. If you know of some documents which can specifically explain to me what the samba log is telling me I'd appreciate it. My biggest gripe is that I can't tell who deleted a file. I have even looked into how to try to find this out or find out what configuration I need to be able to determine this. So if any body could help I'd appreciate it.
Slashdot Mirror
On fake government. An investigation into what the hell Congress has been doing the last 10 years. We used to have news outlet that reported on this kind of thing. My best news source now is the Daily Show for National News. For local state news I still read the paper which is probably why I went to dinner recently and was the only one who new that they were planning to build huge privately owned toll roads in our state and that there were plans to build 16 coal fired power plants.
I mean these weren't illiterate people, but they had decided that the local paper was liberal trype, so they quit reading it. I wish it was their land that they were going to take through eminant domain.
We have a large amount of data entry which goes into third party software and Excel spreadsheet. The people that are entering the data find that it is more convenient to just keep the caps lock key on. I find it very annoying when I go into work on those computers, but I can't blame them. I've heard of many people who complain about this use of the cap lock key, but in the real world there are still a lot of people who are using it.
Are they kidding. The last version was only supported for one year after the previous version. So I'm going to go tell the PHB we should start using a distribution that should be upgraded every other year. Unless they can offer longer version support I don't see this helping.
Those of us working in the real world don't change versions unless we have to, because it lowers our TCO.
I know a data center that was still using RH8 on some of their servers up until 4 months ago and last year I talked with a guy who said they still had RH6.2 on one of their servers.
Heck, until six months ago I had RH7.3 running on 3 servers and still have RH7.1 running on one.
At a minimum I want 3 years security support and prefer 5. Why would I care if I obviously have servers which aren't using security support. Because I don't want multiple flavors of linux, this keeps my training cost down and support cost down.
They have always had a Ministry of Defense. Up until now though they've only been used to wave white flag and yell "Runaway, Runaway, Runaway". The really important news here is that they have attacked something.
Twenty one years ago they attacked a Greenpeace vessel and had they're first victory at sea in 300 years. Now they're going after OpenOffice, man these guys truly have balls.
Be afraid Iran, be very afraid. In 5,000 years they may just come after you.
Just take away our library cards. Or take away our rights to use Windows (That would be cool).
Only one day after we were told how some of the drivers could be hacked on wireless, now we are being told that wireless is the way to go.
This is brought to you by the same MBA's that brought HDTV. I have seen it, but don't see that it is worth the premium price.
I'm not necessarily happy with DVD's for movies either. I believe I've returned 10 movie rentals for every video tape rental that I ever made.
I think we are being sold a lot of hogwash
But I do believe that some of the consumers are catching on or will. I have had a couple of people contact me about their wireless network being slow and then I go to their site and find that they have 15+ computers in an office connected to a single linksys router. Then I have to explain to them what there problem is and then explain to them how insecure they are. On the second one I was even heads up enough to monitor their traffic while I discussed their network topology. When it came time to actually look at there network their computer guy was wanting to give me the WEP key. I just told him in front of the CEO nevermind I've already got it.
Yeah, it was a mean thing to do and it was also the wrong thing to do, but I've gotten tired of discussing over and over again the insecurities of wireless. I feel like I'm beating my head on a stone wall when it comes to this. I think I just smelled that attitude that if I said anything about it they would just come back, " Nobody would hack us were encrypted and we've never been hacked ". I just wanted to skip that discussion. I also think it's negligent on the part of an employer small or large that you should leave valuable information in the open. There are employees which are dependent on a job whose paycheck is dependent on the security of the company. Would you leave the doors unlocked at night?
Okay rant over. Thanks, I feel better.
One of the big issues is versions of platform. He said it right up front RedHat, Suse, Ubuntu. Which one are we developing for? If that isn't bad enough very few have a stable version which they will support for 5 years. Yes there are server versions for each one of these which are supported for 5 years plus, but most of the linux community is using the latest and greatest flavor of Fedora, Suse, Ubuntu, not the 5 year stable version.
Who wants to develope for a constantly moving target? Especially when the total market is less than 5% of users.
Now let's go back to RedHat, Suse. They have stable products, but look at the cost. The last time I looked a basic server version from RH or Suse, cost $349 per year over 5 years thats $1745. Of course both of these come with a lot of capability. But more than an equivalent cost of a MS server? Yes there are a lot of hidden costs in a MS server, but you have to really struggle most of the time to get the bean and pointy heads, beyond that initial cost. The concept of CAL's usually totally befuddles them.
So for the most part you have a small percentage of the market share using linux with a version that is going to be stable for 5 years. The remaining desktop users are changing their version of Linux every 6 months.
So who the hell in there right mind is going to spend a shit load of development cost on a product that runs on a platform that nobody is probably going to be using 1 year from now.
Currently I see it as linux is currently suffering from chicken and egg syndrom from about every direction. A large number of people won't use linux because they don't have the apps they need. No one will develope the apps they need on linux because not enough people are using it.
No companies develope drivers for devices, because not enough people are using it.
There are not enough people out there to support linux, because there aren't enough people out there using linux.
But, could you imagine what the newsgroups would look like if 15% of the desktop market were linux, how about 7%. 7% would probably double the traffic. 15% would probably triple it and I hate to think about the flame wars started between know it all's and newbie's. That's another hump we have to get over. Not everyone has thick enough skin to get their information from newgroups.
We still have quite a few hurdles to make it into the main stream. I just wonder how many of us are going to tough it out for the next 5 or 10 years for that to happen.
This is from an IT Managers perspective.
So far from everything I have seen about Ubuntu is that they don't get it. A stable release needs to be stable and supported for 3 minimum and maybe 5 years. And I'd prefer not to see a new release but once every 18 months. I don't want tech's going around installing the latest version, because it's the lastest version. I don't want to argue with them about it. I don't want 6 didn't version of an OS running on my desktops and servers.
2nd with this continuos release cycles your never going to get software providers to support the platform. It would be financial suicide for the software company or cost prohibitive for the end user. "Sure we'll support Ubuntu but it will cost 2x what it cost for RH or Windows".
I think Ubuntu and Fedora have done some great things for the linux community as far as moving it along, but when they say they are ready for the desktop (General desktop usage) then they are way off.
1) They do not have a mainstream Office Suite that can replace MS Office. They have something that's close OpenOffice, but it is currently not capable of replacing MS Office in 70% of the environments where I see MS Office in use. Why? Because it does not support document sharing of Excel or Calc sheets. Everywhere I've been either small, medium, or large size companies they use sharing of Excel documents. I've gotten to the point where I've quit showing OpenOffice to other people because invariably everything is fine up until the time you tell them that OpenOffice does not support sharing.
2) Very, very few companies support/build software for Linux OS. There are too many companies out there that have coders who are only versed in Visual Basic or Visual C++.
So until there is some break through in an application that is a got to have it, and it only runs on linux I don't think we will see a big swing over to linux.
But between now and then nobody is going to make that effort unless they have a platform that is going to be stable for at least a couple of years. That's where RH is doing something very right.
Let the ubur geeks have something to play with Fedora, Ubuntu, but provide a business product that's stable and developers can count on.
I would recommend one of the redhat classes. About half of the training classes I have attended have been through redhat. I pay my own way sometimes for classes and when it comes to classes the only ones I'll put my money on are the redhat ones. So far I have been very satisfied with there classes and can't remember being bored during any of there classes. Each instructor is a little different and has different skills that they are willing to share (beyond just the course work). I've learned a few tips and tricks on how to more effectively use the vi editor and gotten help with some bash shell programs. Even had an instructor point out that one of the bash scripts in the manual, while it worked, was a bad example of coding and spent some time explaining what was wrong with it.
So with my money I try to look at what skills sets I need and look through the red hat catalogue to see if they have something on it.
I've never taken a SANS course but have heard good thing about it
Microsoft classes from my experience are a crap shoot. Sometimes you get lucky and get a good instructor and sometimes you just get somebody whose passing the time of day and will spend as much time talking about their drive to work or home repairs as they will about the material. But of course MS makes their stuff so straight forward and easy to use there's hardly any need for classes. I don't even know why they bother with documentation.
For those of you outside the US. Please remember that Jerry Springer and the US government does not represent the people that live in this country, despite what the constitutional document says.
Washington DC too small to be a state too large to be an asylum for the mentally deranged.
Maybe we should ask people in other countries what they do with their insane people. Maybe they have a better plan.
Great, excellent source of shrapnel
I have made trips to Asia and Europe and never had a laptop checked, never even opened.
But if they did fail to declare something that was purchased abroad there could be serious consequences.
How would they know, they have their ways.
I always make it a point to never screw around with people that carry guns anyway
I just ordered a Dell on the 16th and it arrived today, this was without expedited shipping.
If I had some way to vote on US grants going to Project Gutenberg, I certainly would do so.
/. could request reponses be sent to congressmen and see if it has any effect. We could pick a topic such as this, and confirm we responded to our congressman with a yeah or neh (your choice, you know like a poll where we tell someone outside of /. the results) and see if we have any sway or not.
If you live in the US then the closest you can come to doing this, is to send/inform your congressman. That's why they call our form of democracy a representative democracy. Yes, I realize that not much may come out of this, but hey, we don't tell them, then they don't know (I don't think any of them or their aides are slashdot readers). I'm pretty sure though that they are still quite busy spanking some CEO's and raving to every local news reporter the horrendous indecency imposed on America when Janet Jackson exposed her breast.
Maybe, instead of just shutting down web sites (slashdotting),
Or we could just continue to critic articles and television shows we haven't read or seen and bitch about "how it sucks the man is getting us down or might get us down".
Okay, I'll switch to decaf tomorrow.
Why don't /.'ers start a boycott of McDonalds, Eckerds and the other companies which are mentioned on SCO's website as buying and using SCO's product?
With all the little windows with select boxes maybe someone with a more artistic bend could make an art piece out of their survey and we could have a contest. Snap shot your answers and submit them for the first annual MS answers art show. We could do this every year and I could bring the tent with lemonade and cookies.
Here, here I agree. We tried to set it up so that it would be Dev on some systems and production on some others. Then the developers just couldn't live with that constraint. Servers crashed, "I don't know why, couldn't be anything that we are doing". Silently they moved their development code back to the development server. It began to crash. But by then they had discussed or told upper management that using a development server was to cumbersome so guess what happened during the budget crunch. We needed another server and now the development server is pushed into a production role and it crashes twice a week. Despite the song it's not us, I believe that people are beginning to realize that development should not be done on production systems.
I don't know about flaps being available in this accident at Siox City. I believe they had complete hydraulic failure and were reduced to controlling by manipulating engine throttles alone.
What if MS funds SCO to buy Novel? Now that would be a shit storm. Or what if MS outright buys Novel?
Please tell me it can't happen so I can sleep.
Oh and by the way, there were a few countries in Europe that went to Linux, have their feeling on Linux changed now that Novel has bought SuSE.
I have been using SAmba for about 2 years now and I haven't been able to find diddly squat from the samba log. This is one of the more frustating things I have had to put up with. If you know of some documents which can specifically explain to me what the samba log is telling me I'd appreciate it. My biggest gripe is that I can't tell who deleted a file. I have even looked into how to try to find this out or find out what configuration I need to be able to determine this. So if any body could help I'd appreciate it.
And exactly how much did our government recently pay for MS software to be used for homeland security.